


All Hallows' Eve

by The_Real_Squoose



Series: All Hallows' Eve Universe [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Blue and Ronan POVs, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gangsey as adults, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Multi, Vampire Gansey, Witch Blue, established relationships - Freeform, halloween party, spooky season aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Real_Squoose/pseuds/The_Real_Squoose
Summary: On All Hallows’ Eve, the veil between worlds stretches thin, and spirits wander. It is the only night they can all be together.Six years in and it isn't such a grief-filled event. Blue and Henry return from working magic jobs abroad with a trunk full of fun and a party plan, but things are rarely simple with them. One thing's for sure: it's going to be a hell of a night.
Relationships: Henry Cheng & Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: All Hallows' Eve Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020649
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	1. this dream isn't feeling sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [For A Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17040779) by [lipsstainedbloodred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lipsstainedbloodred/pseuds/lipsstainedbloodred). 



> THINGS TO KNOW: so this isn't too confusing, this fic takes place in an alternate timeline/universe. This world knows about magic and has faeries/witches/vampires/oh my, but the events of the 4 books were pretty much the same. The timeline diverges afterward with no CDTH. This takes place when the Gangsey are all 23 (or technically, though there are some weird circumstances). More details will be explained throughout!
> 
> Chapter titles from 'Ribs' by Lorde

The sight of Gansey and Henry’s obnoxious cars greeted Blue as she pulled up to Monmouth. Gansey’s, orange enough for her to tease him over the phone about it being Halloween themed, and Henry’s, decked out with painted ghouls on the windows and a plastic skeleton wearing sunglasses in the trunk. Monmouth’s many great windows reflected the pink and orange of the setting sun, yellow circles of lamplight glowing here and there. And then--Gansey’s pale face above, a smile barely contained.

Blue opened her door and waved unabashedly, beaming as Henry appeared, waving back. She paused only to grab her tie-dye travel bag from the passenger seat before slamming her car door and rushing up the stairs. Eager and giddy, forgetting all her little troubles.

It had been three weeks since she’d last seen Henry, and two months since she’d seen Gansey. She wouldn’t ever regret having made a business for herself out of magic after all, traveling all over the country to heal and help people, occasionally being called across the sea to set up wards, but gods, did it make her lonely sometimes. She missed her friends. She missed the days when they were always together, when the future was uncertain and therefore, nothing to be concerned about until it demanded decisions be made.

“ _Jane,”_ Gansey said, as she burst through the door. 

“Don’t start, Dick,” she said, dropping her bag, and threw herself into his arms. Gansey laughed, holding her tight and spinning her around like she weighed nothing. He looked the same, which was to say, as stressed as ever, but the tight line of his mouth would ease by the end of the hour. It always did, when she came to visit. He set her down, and she smiled over his shoulder as they swayed. “Henry! Did you sell that painting?”

“For fifty-two American dollars,” Henry answered. “It was cursed. Apparently. I was pleased to get it off my hands for any price.”

He had changed. Not in any dramatic way, but there was always a tiny new something or another with him. Style, hair color, makeup look. He still wore one of the flashy ‘work’ suits she’d seen before, blue and sequined at the collar, suggesting he hadn’t arrived long before her, but he had orange and black eyeliner on. A tiny new something to say time had passed.

Gansey looked like a snapshot of the past. He was cold in her arms, no heartbeat against hers. Blue kissed his cheek and brushed a hand through his hair to displace it, so he might be a bit more disheveled and natural. Not so far out of reach. He smiled softly down at her, eyes warming, and Blue drew her hand back from the nape of his neck, her other from his waist, and pushed every less-than-purely-happy thought away.

“What kind of curse?” Blue turned to Henry. “Like, ‘your drawers will slam sometimes’ curse, or ‘your bloodline ends with you’ curse?”

Henry laughed. “I was already intending to end my bloodline.” He reached for her, and Blue leapt at him only slightly less aggressively than she’d leapt at Gansey. Curse him, he had to bend low to press his cheek to the top of her head. “No, it made my every dream like an acid trip. And it had this sort of energy that drew goblins to my doorstep--I was staying in a motel, and the owner had to chase them off with a broomstick.”

Blue giggled at the thought of Henry opening his door and looking down, down, down, to a tiny horde of the vicious green creatures. She squeezed him tight until he complained, then relaxed into his hold. He was a furnace compared to Gansey and the snippy autumn air, his arms heavy and warm, a comfort she missed on the road. “And where are my other darlings?”

“Adam’s waiting for you so he won’t waste any energy,” Gansey said, “And Ronan is--”

_Kerah!_

Chainsaw’s cry marked Ronan’s disengagement from the dreamscape.

“Awake now. Officially, I hope. He has been in and out all day,” Henry finished. He let her go so she could dart to Ronan’s room.

The times in which Ronan woke up were largely unpredictable--typically every two or three weeks, any hour day or night, but there were a few times he’d woken for a few days on a somewhat regular sleep schedule, and other times where he hadn’t come to for more than a month. He’d be paralyzed for a few minutes, then disoriented and sleepy for longer. Lucid afterward for anywhere from a handful of hours to three sleepless days. And then he’d slip away again.

It had been six months since Blue had seen Ronan. She’d missed him by fifteen minutes once in that time, and it had stung, but now he was guaranteed to be awake all night. Blue was going to need a lot of coffee and a shot of energy potion to keep up.

“Ronan Lynch. We meet again,” Blue said, mock-grimly, leaning in his open doorway. He looked up at her through half-lidded eyes, arms full of dream things, a cord weaved between his fingers so tightly they were turning red. She perched on the edge of the bed, leaning over the sheet-covered body between them to carefully unwind the cord. Ronan’s features were sharp and defined, a harsh figure cut from marble. The lamp on his desk was on already, lighting half his face, the other in shadow and marked by a new scar.

“Midget,” Ronan gritted out.

A black lump behind him moved and squawked, and Chainsaw peeked her head out from behind his hip. She hopped on his stomach, shaking her wings out and pecking at the sheets impatiently.

“Welcome back,” Henry said. He opened the window, and Chainsaw immediately flew out.

Ronan’s eyebrow twitched. “Traitor.”

Blue brushed her thumb over the scar, starting above his eyebrow and skipping over his eye to streak down his cheek to the corner of his lip. Most likely the product of another tangle with a night horror. Blue had made a career out of protecting people in all sorts of ways; plants to take the damage of hexes, stones over doorways to ward off evil, amulets to heal and prevent compulsion from creatures, and most commonly, wards around properties. She had not found a way to protect her own dear friend.

“Alright, Ronan?” Gansey said.

Ronan softened bit by bit, tension bleeding out of his limbs. He sat up slowly, touching the same spot Blue had and letting his dream things tumble to the sheets. (Made up proper and neat, like Gansey had kept coming in and fixing them.)

“Alright,” he said. Ronan nodded to the leather cord in Blue’s lap, a chunk of amethyst on the end. “That amulet’s for you. It’ll get warm when you’re in danger. Should stop you from walking into another griffin nest.”

Blue could do nothing but look at him for a moment, fondness overcoming her.

Ronan took a mushroom from a small pile and bounced it off her cheek. “Don’t give me that look.”

“Thank you,” Blue said, grinning, and pulled it over her head. They clasped arms, hand to elbow, forearm to vulnerable forearm, in the way of proper Cabeswater magicians, then Ronan offered a fistbump and Blue bypassed it to give him an awkwardly angled hug. He climbed gently out to greet Henry and Gansey.

Half the things he’d brought back were for Henry. After his own mother’s death and all the chaos of Piper Greenmantle and the demon, Henry had gotten into the trading of magical objects and artifacts. Most of it was above the table--business was bigger than ever with each passing year of magical knowledge being exchanged over the internet--but Ronan would never give him something so dangerous as to be unreasonable for the more secret deals.

He talked through what he’d asked Ronan for as Blue curiously poked went the items. Everything was sorted away into a bag he’d brought, then set aside as Ronan moved him out of the way.

It was time to wake Adam.

Ronan drew the sheet away from Adam’s face. His dust brown hair splayed across the pillow, delicate features a mix of slack and set, still as the dead. He was arranged to look like he was sleeping, curled on his side, hands by his throat, but it was clear from more than a cursory glance that his life and soul were entirely gone from his body. Ronan rolled him onto his back. He was horribly limp. Ronan pressed his right hand to Adam’s heart, his left to his forehead. Blue laid her hands over his, the feeling normal and empty for a few calm moments.

“ _Cabeswater,”_ Ronan whispered, and let out a stream of Latin. A call, a prayer.

Power surged in response. They connected to the ley line, magic moving like a current from the ground, up through Blue’s legs to her chest, then back down her arms and into Adam. He didn’t need them, not necessarily, but they’d found it was easier for Adam to come back when they anchored him.

“You ought to ration your energy,” Gansey said, “you’ll have two people drawing on you all night.”

A hollowness began to take root in Blue’s chest. “He’s right.” Adam wasn’t awake yet, but she was getting less powerful instead of more. “Ronan?”

“I’ve got it.”

She pulled away.

The moments passed, her heartbeat loud in her ears, trees rustling outside like Cabeswater was trying to speak.

Adam opened his eyes.

“You had me worried, asshole,” Ronan said.

Ronan slid his hand down to Adam’s jaw, and Adam’s hand shot to his wrist, looking more like he was ready to rip it away than something tender, but he didn’t make another move. The haze in his eyes cleared. “Nice to see you too.” The trees rustled more insistently. Orange, red, and yellow leaves flashed outside, a riot of color made brighter by the stained sky. Adam’s eyes flickered to the window, his head cocked. “I’m glad to be back, Cabeswater.”

Adam caught Blue’s eye. Her fingertips buzzed, cheeks aching from all her smiling. She was happier than she’d been in a long time.

Henry clapped his hands. “Well, all that’s left is Noah. Who wants pizza?”

They ate while they waited for the sun to set, the pizza reheated in a microwave Henry had gotten installed ages ago. _It is a miracle Gansey boy made it that long without a kitchen,_ he’d said, and now they had a proper one, all clean wood counters and brown and green paint. Old-fashioned and comfortable, the colors washed out. Henry had chosen every piece well; it looked like it had always been part of Monmouth. It reminded Ronan of the Barns.

Ronan sat on the ‘bad’ stool so he could rock on its uneven leg, to Henry’s annoyance, and soaked in everything about their reunion. The world seemed vivid, defined, in the first hours after waking up. Solid, unchanging, dependable. He could trust that nothing would twist away beneath his hands and warp into a monster, or creep out of some corner when he turned his back. The food in his hands had a weight and texture bigger than life. Monmouth’s telescope and slouching stacks of books and research-covered walls screamed _home._

Everything was too much, and not enough.

Henry talking animatedly about a venture into a cave system in Iceland. All the things he’d done, and how much he wished they could all be there. How Gansey would have planned the whole thing and kept them safe, how Blue would have loved the glow worms, how Noah would have enjoyed the ocean and Adam the nearby town and Ronan the adventure. Too much, not enough.

Blue and Gansey poking fun at each other as they set up the ritual, debating the use of mint plants while Blue drew chalk lines and runes. Too much, not enough. If only they could have more time. If only Ronan could wind back the clock to when they were seventeen, eighteen, and find a way to fix things. 

Adam’s ankle hooked with his between their stools, his eyes tracking Henry and laughing along, asking questions. Too much, not enough. Ronan hooked one of the chair legs and pulled him closer, grinning at Adam’s squawk.

“You’re a sap,” Adam said, shaking his head fondly. He settled, radiating warmth into Ronan’s side, and Ronan pressed them together ankle to hip, gleefully jostling him with his elbow.

“We’re about ready, if you’re all done eating entire pizzas,” Blue called. They’d started with a stack of four, and now there were two slices of everything left.

“Did you hear my tale?” Henry said. “I was nearly drowned by mermaids.”

“I don’t blame them for trying.”

“They have _fangs,_ Sargent. And claws.”

“And how is that a counterpoint?”

Henry hopped off his stool and rounded the counter, dusting his hands off and preparing for the summoning. “They are not the creatures you want to side with.”

“Wouldn’t monsters make better allies? Better than enemies.”

Ronan and Adam wiped their hands and followed. Cabeswater’s magic didn’t feel like it had quite left Ronan. It was a quiet whisper in the background of his mind, stirring in his palms like he could think and _pull_ and an object would fall from the dreamscape.

They gathered at the five points of the pentacle Blue had etched out on the dusty concrete floor, bowls by their feet half-filled with varying materials. Water for Gansey, stones for Henry, leaves and twigs for Adam, moss for Ronan, and in Blue’s, a candle.

“Is anyone going to suddenly pass out if we do this?” Blue said. “No? Everyone’s alright?”

“Cabeswater left me some power,” Ronan said. “I’ll pass it to you.”

“Good. Okay.” She was trembling, just slightly. Blue smoothed her hands down her flowered overalls and drew a matchbox from the front pocket. Gansey put a hand on her shoulder as she breathed, slow and careful, and lit the candle. All summonings had some amount of risk; the first few attempts had gone awfully enough to put a shake in Blue’s hands every year since. “Everyone--you know the deal.”

They took hands. The circuit closed. All their respective magic flowed into the next person and the next, catching on Blue before continuing its path around. It wasn’t such a dramatic affair anymore, but Blue took her time, and Ronan listened intently to every precise, rehearsed syllable of Latin dripping from her tongue.

The lights went out.

The trees whistled and hissed.

The low-level hum of electricity and energy dissipated.

As the sun slipped firmly below the horizon, darkness fully conquering the view, a bluish wisp of a form took shape in the center of the star.

Blue didn’t slow, didn’t hesitate until the wisp solidified, features filling in, an Aglionby sweater appearing first, then a thin throat and a smudgy, kind face.

“Noah,” Ronan breathed.

  
  


There was no accidental summoning of demons, and all was well. Blue didn’t let go of Noah until he’d taken enough power from her that he felt nearly warm, nearly human. Then the tension growing in the room burst, joyful and loving, and voices overlapped with stories and quips, the knowledge fully cementing that it was All Hallows’ Eve. When the veil between worlds stretches thin, and spirits wander, the one night of the year they could all be together. And they were. _And they were._

Blue knelt on the bathroom floor with an old white sheet spread out around her, attempting to measure the right distance for eye holes. Adam and Ronan had vanished to the latter’s room to figure out their costumes after Henry informed them that they would be going to a costume party, and had no choice in the matter. Henry was in Noah’s old room putting on his costume, and Blue had sent Gansey to lug her suitcase up from the car.

“I give up,” Blue said, waving her scissors at Noah when he appeared in the doorway. “I’m just going to put this on you and try not to stab your eyes out.”

“I don’t think you can,” Noah said. “Stab my eyes out, that is. But hey, maybe you should try--it won’t hurt. I can look even creepier for the party.”

Blue scoffed. “That’s horrifying.”

“I’ll still be able to see!”

She stood, drawing up the sheet, trying not to be serious but finding his unflagging enthusiasm disturbing.

“Actually, maybe I’d just blink and fix it.”

“Noah.”

“I’m not really _real.”_

“You have a physical form.”

Noah reached out as if he were going to take the scissors from her, and Blue flinched. He didn’t look the slightest bit off-put, tilting his head and smiling. “I was just joking.” Between one moment and the next, his eye sockets emptied, blood dripping down his cheeks, skin stretched thin over visible bone. Blue froze, her breath catching. Between one moment and the next, Noah looked normal again. “See? I’m still a spirit. You can only touch me if I will it.”

“ _Comrades!”_ Henry cried, sweeping into the room and saving Blue from further darkening the moment. He held a lacrosse stick over his shoulder, and had changed into a white sports uniform with orange letters reading, ‘ _PALMETTO STATE FOXES’._ “Can you dress any quicker? We have trick-or-treating to do.”

“Aren’t we getting a little old for that?” Ronan called from afar.

Henry shouted back, and Blue yanked the sheet up and over Noah’s head in one grand move, arranging it over him so it was roughly centered.

“I can still see you,” he said. “Hold up some fingers.” Blue held them up. “Three!”

She shook her head and set to figuring out the eyeholes. He’d wanted to be a ghost for reasons beyond the irony, she suspected. This way, no one would be able to tell he was anything other than pure human. “What’s your costume from, Hen?” Blue said, trying to distract herself as she pinched the sheet away from Noah’s face and snipped it.

“A book series. I am Andrew Minyard, sports star and knife-wielding maniac extraordinaire. And who will you be this fine night?”

“Gansey and I are being pirates. I didn’t have time to get anything better, but pirates are easy, so we won’t hold you up,” she teased. The sound of her suitcase’s broken wheels squealing against the floor let her know Gansey was back. “Darling, if you open it, your costume is on top on the left.”

She heard the zipper, then rustling fabric, and Gansey chuckled. “Would you like a sword to go with yours? Henry gifted me one this year.”

“Yes,” she said immediately. Blue finished with Noah’s costume and dropped the scissors on the counter before pulling the sheet to his face. He stared back at her with wide eyes, unblinking. He looked alive, no hollow looks yet. “And when do I get a sword?”

“Coming up,” Henry said. “You’ve ruined the surprise.”

Noah waggled his fingers and twisted back and forth, white folds flaring around him. He darted out of the room with a cheery, _thank you!,_ clearing the space for Gansey to enter holding up the cheap black coat she’d found for him.

“It really is like no time has passed,” Blue said.

Gansey understood. “That’s a good thing. At least this doesn’t hurt Noah.”

“ _I_ feel older.” She poked Henry’s side. “I feel like an old lady when I’m with you. Do you need energy potion tonight or are you going to run on gummy worms and espresso?”

“I will run on the souls of my fallen enemies.”

Blue rolled her eyes. Gansey laughed.

“Out,” Blue said to Henry. “We need to change.”

“ _Oh._ I see.”

“Shoo, fly.”

Henry gave a suggestive look and left, shutting the door behind him. Noah sang _‘Monster Mash’_ out in the hall, and before long, she could hear Henry joining in. Blue treasured that feeling of synchrony. How easily they could click back into place and go back to having fun, feeling young, no matter what.

When she looked back to Gansey, he was already staring at her, a gentle curve to his lips.

“What?” she said.

He drew closer, slow and smooth. If he’d had the grace of a king before, he had the grace of an angel now. Gansey raised a hand to her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

Blue leaned into his cool palm. She hadn’t changed since getting on the plane, and her hair was still windblown from the weather as she’d walked through the city blocks to where she’d left her car. “This is how I always look.” 

“Precisely.”

“Is this the part where you tell me about ducks?”

“Did you see that Monty Python movie about King Arthur?”

Blue hummed, stepping closer. “He reminded me of our quest for Glendower. What’s the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

“African or European?” he said, and kissed the smile off her lips. Blue wrapped her arms around his neck and laughed into it. Gansey’s lean body against hers, his arms around her waist, his familiar kiss felt like coming home. 

Someone pounded on the door.

“We have places to be, lovebirds!” Henry said, but went right back to singing.

They kissed until Blue had to breathe, and then she took Gansey’s face in her hands and kissed both his cheeks. He hadn’t opened his eyes. She watched his lashes flutter for a moment, running her fingers through his hair, then kissed his eyelids.

“I’ll see you plenty more,” she said.

“I know,” Gansey said. “I needed to beg just one kiss off you.”

“I feel like I’ve heard that before.”

Gansey’s eyes opened, his gaze faraway and dazed as he blinked at her. There he was. The unraveled version of him, tense lines gone. “I said something like it years ago.”

He kissed her chastely once more, and they pulled apart. They dressed amongst a dance of turned-backs-or-not like children, until Gansey had to lace up the rough corset she’d made and they talked easily about her plane ride and the old women she’d befriended at the airport in London. With their simple boots-puffy shirts-trousers combinations, it didn’t take long.

Blue smoothed down her hair, giving her costume one last check and catching Gansey’s eye in the mirror. “I’ve loved Halloween since I was a kid. My teenage self swore I’d never get tired of it. I suppose I haven’t, but I don’t have all the dedication to costumes anymore.” 

Gansey wrapped his arms around her waist, tucking his chin over her shoulder. “Our teenage selves swore many things. I don’t believe we’ve broken many promises yet.”

Blue plucked a stereotypical pirate hat off the counter and put it on Gansey’s head, her other arm laying over his, pensive for a moment. Then the absolute ridiculousness of how _false_ that was crashed over her, and she dissolved into laughter.

Gansey stared, perplexed. “Is there something I don’t know?”

“Oh. _Oh._ I swore I’d never speak to raven boys, that I’d never fall in love, never kiss anyone, never--” She paused on the last one, tongue betraying her. _Never be tied down by anyone._ She wasn’t. She felt like she’d hardly seen Gansey that year, and that had to change, but she wouldn’t be _tied down,_ but she-- “I swore I’d never have a white-picket-fence life. I’m glad I haven’t succumbed to it, no matter what.”

Gansey chuckled. “I would keep you from it.”

“If I change my mind, it isn’t me,” Blue said. “It’s a shapeshifter fake.” She reluctantly twisted out of Gansey’s arms and shuffled to the door, pulling him with her by the waist. “I do want a life with you though. I want to keep what we have. My mom asked me if we planned on getting married any time soon, and I realized I don’t even know where we stand on it.”

Gansey coughed suddenly, looking like a deer in headlights, and Blue opened the door with a laugh.

“I’m not putting you on the spot,” Blue said. “And marriage isn’t really a big deal to me, but I know it is to you. I’m just saying. I love you.”

Gansey released her as she stepped into the hall, adjusting his hat and dodging her gaze. He seemed--quiet. A bit off-put. Blue decided it was likely shock at having the topic brought up so suddenly and frankly, and if it wasn’t only that, she trusted him to tell her.

“I love you too.” Gansey cleared his throat. “We will. . .discuss this at a later date.”

Blue fixed the lapels of his coat. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He caught her right hand and brushed his lips to her knuckles, then used it to turn her into a spin. “How lucky am I to have a daring queen of the high seas love me?”

Blue barely avoided stumbling right into Ronan as he emerged from his room.

“Put a cap on the mushfest,” he said.

“Yeah, unless I get to be part of it!” Henry called from his spot on the couch. Their rendition of cheesy Halloween songs had evidently been put on pause so he could show Noah something on his phone. 

“Come over here and join, then,” Blue said. She looked over as Adam emerged and fully processed what they’d dressed as; each other. Adam in black jeans, a black tank top, and leather jacket. Ronan in overalls and Adam’s faded red Coca Cola t-shirt. “What’s this? And you’re saying _we’re_ the sickly sweet ones?”

“Yes,” Ronan deadpanned, as he put a straw hat on his head.

“Oh, I am not the farmer here,” Adam protested.

They moved together toward the door, Henry and Noah getting up to meet them. Blue held out her hand until Gansey got the hint and took it, lacing their fingers together. She considered him for a private moment while the rest of their family talked, before the night became fully about them.

“Alright?” she asked softly. She squeezed his hand three times, one last reminder. He squeezed back.

“Alright.”

  
  


The streets had settled fully into darkness. Into that particular mood of Halloween night. Stars twinkled through the haze of a light mist, lampposts casting haloes of light across the cement. In between those yellowy pockets of warped reality, catching the gazes of tall monsters with pillow cases and tiny adventurers hanging on to baskets, was a living darkness much like the dreamscape. Something _more_ to it.

Schrödinger's cat. A possibility. A paradox. Nothing and something at once, neither, not until you stumbled across it. Not until, perhaps, you willed it into being. Through excitement, through fear.

“Not going to talk up the neighbors?” Ronan asked Gansey.

They leaned against the front fence of the first house they’d gone up to. The air was crisp and cool, a breeze sending leaves and candy wrappers rasping across the ground behind him, the tree over their heads shifting. Ronan could look anywhere and catch a pair of eyes, he knew. If he thought he would find them, he would. In the tree, in the bushes, in the shadows under the porch.

Gansey stopped staring at the can of coke he’d been handed, smiling ruefully. “Do you want this?”

“Bloodsuckers can’t have sweets?”

“It unsettles my stomach to take too much.”

“You’d think your stomach would be able to take anything.”

Adam cuffed the back of Ronan’s head. “I’ll take it.”

Ronan smacked Adam’s side in response, but Adam gave him a weighted look. Gansey handed the can to him and stared at Blue, Henry, and Noah on the porch instead.

Ronan stood by his statement that they were too old for trick-or-treating. Many people had thought so over the years in the houses they’d visited, but now they stuck to the same three streets where the owners had grown to know them. The moment they’d rung the doorbell, a middle-aged couple had immediately emerged with a cooler of drinks for them to choose from. Blue and Henry were still chatting them up. Gansey normally joined in, dragging out the experience, but for the first time, he’d stepped away, and Ronan was only more bothered by it.

_What’s wrong with you?_ he wanted to ask, not seeing the need for subtlety, but Adam would no doubt tell him to be more graceful about it. Ronan propped his elbows on the fence and kicked Adam’s foot.

_What’s wrong with him?_ said Ronan’s raised eyebrows.

_Not sure,_ said Adam’s cool expression and careful glance to Gansey.

“--wonderful to talk to you,” Blue was saying when Ronan tuned back in, backing off the porch. Noah wandered away to kick up leaves in the yard, while Henry shook hands with the woman who’d offered candy.

“You look beautiful as ever, Mrs. Colson. It would be a pleasure to see you next year,” Henry continued. Ronan gave an unimpressed look to Adam, whose mouth curled into the smallest of smirks. As soon as they finished their goodbyes and shut the door, Henry raised his bucket, a plastic pumpkin that matched Blue’s own he’d brought instead of his lacrosse stick, and shook it proudly. He was a determined charmer when candy was involved; an impressive amount of it rattled.

“Gansey,” Adam said, “do you want to move on? We could head right to the party. Or Ronan and I would go back to Monmouth with you.”

“We would?” Ronan said, more amused than resistant.

Gansey’s head turned sharply toward them, his vaguely melancholy expression instantly melting away, replaced by a mask of muted confusion. 

“What? What are we discussing,” Henry said, before Gansey could answer. Their circle closed when Noah slung an arm over Blue’s shoulders, giving Ronan the same sense it always did, that they were in their own pocket of the universe.

“ _Tact,”_ Blue reminded Henry, hand on the hilt of the sword strapped to her hip.

“Right, right. Are you feeling alright, Gansey, old man?”

“Fine,” he said, with a too-chipper smile. “You seem to have pulled off quite the heist there. How much candy did you get?”

“Brushing it off and redirecting doesn’t work on us,” Blue said.

Gansey glanced between them all. “I’m perfectly happy.”

“You sure?” Adam said.

_That’s when I would snap,_ Ronan thought. Right then, he’d say some equivalent of _fuck off_ and move on. Instead, Gansey stood up straight and held his hands up, smiling easier.

“Aren’t we all going to have our bouts of melancholy on a night like this?” Gansey said. “To the next house.”

Blue met Adam’s eyes. Whatever she saw put her at ease.

“Onward to glory.” She looped her arm through Gansey’s, and the topic was collectively dropped. They stepped back out onto the sidewalk, the road visible once more, swallowed up yards away by a growing mist. Several houses down, there seemed to be a fog machine.

Ronan saw Gansey’s point and hadn’t thought his trouble was anything more significant in the first place, but if Adam had pushed the question, knowing how Gansey would react, then he’d seen a deeper issue. When Adam hung back a bit, his elbow brushing Ronan’s, he slowed down to talk to him. Not only for Gansey. He couldn’t get enough time with Adam. It would never be enough until they were awake and together and decades had passed, and even then, he’d never want to say goodbye.

Blue, Gansey, Noah, and Henry became one line of linked arms and swaying steps, their laughter brightening the night and softening Ronan’s edges. The next house was dark, but the one after was overflowing with decorations. Fairy lights meant to look like ivy spilled across the sidewalk, leading back to a pumpkin carriage as tall as Blue that moved back and forth to a high, whimsical tune. Plastic witches, foam tombstones, black cardboard cats, and painted skeletons battled for the spotlight. Colored pricks of light spun over the ground.

“This is enough Halloween spirit for the whole night,” Adam said, and this time, his fingers brushed the inside of Ronan’s elbow. He shivered and stopped one step into the grass, letting the others go ahead up to the house. Three women wearing fantastically elaborate costumes of the witches from ‘ _Hocus Pocus’_ tossed candy down and happily struck up a conversation.

“Wrong, Parrish.” He snagged one of Adam’s belt loops--his own belt loop, really--and tugged him closer. Adam went easily. Ronan rested his hand on Adam’s hip, and Adam’s hand settled over his elbow. “You can never have too much spooky spirit.”

“Say that again next year when you find your room covered in decorations.”

“Is that a promise?”

Adam opened his mouth and closed it again. “Shut up.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“You’re cute.” Adam tapped under Ronan’s chin with a curled finger, closing his open mouth, curled around a quip. There were so many things Ronan wanted to tell him, but the words were backing up in his mind and tangling on his tongue, incomprehensible. Then, Adam said, hushed and heart wrenching, “I missed you.”

They’d had their reunion earlier, alone in Ronan’s room, standing by the bed they’d come and gone from for the past year, side by side but never conscious together. It had taunted him. The sheets changed and straightened by Adam, awaiting their return. The spare dream things piled on the floor at the foot of it. The desk with its old lamp within reach and the journal where they’d scrawled letters back and forth to each other. Pages and pages and pages.

“It’s only been a year,” Ronan said, and every word hurt to the marrow of his bones.

Adam fiddled with his unopened soda, head bowed.

They’d had their reunion earlier, and it had been one long embrace. Ronan’s arms around Adam’s shoulders, his hand in Adam’s hair, crushing them together like they could meld into one. Adam’s arms steel bands across his waist and back, like he’d never let go. Like no force on earth could make him. There hadn’t been any words exchanged, and Ronan didn’t have any, he just _needed--_ needed more, needed to see him, needed to climb into Adam’s chest and live there.

Now it was the time for words. What could he offer that was worth anything at all?

“This can’t be our new truth,” Ronan said.

It was the first time that they hadn’t woken up together for so long. Adam was lucky to be pulled awake once every other month. Ronan was in and out sporadically and without control, days or weeks or months apart. He’d missed Adam so narrowly before that the ink was still wet on the last words of his letter, from the stupid adorable quill he’d been jokingly trying to use.

Adam raised his head. “It won’t be.” There was steel in his eyes. There was steel in much of him now, a new hardness Ronan wanted to erase but knew was necessary. “I think I found a way to get into the dreamscape.”

In the long moment it took for Ronan to process it, Gansey returned, once again ahead of the others. Ronan didn’t let go. He tugged Adam closer so he could slip his arm around his waist, his mind turning and turning.

“What do you mean,” Ronan said evenly, a test.

“You need a better knife than that to carve a pumpkin,” Adam replied.

So they weren’t telling Gansey.

Gansey looked between them. “We have appropriate tools. Henry and Blue planned a carving competition.”

Adam laughed. Ronan felt the vibrations in his own ribs where they were pressed together. “Of course they did,” Adam said. “Teams or everyone for themselves?”

“All-out war.”

“We should make pumpkin bread.”

“I’ll help eat it,” Ronan said.

Adam squeezed his shoulder. “No treats for you unless you help make them.”

With more dramatic goodbyes, Blue and Henry weaved back through the decorations, Blue’s new amulet glinting in the lights. She was smiling broadly now, and when her gaze paused on Ronan, he couldn’t help but return it. Blue tossed a Snickers bar at his chest. He caught it and waved it at her in thanks.

Noah raised his arms, funny and formless in the sheet. “They liked my costume.”

“We’re invited to lunch,” Blue said. Noah wandered off to poke around the yard, inspecting the tombstones. “One of them was a real witch, we might be able to exchange some tips.”

Ronan sighed. “Are you going to do this with every house?”

“Yes.” She turned to Noah. “Are you looking to pick one out for yourself?”

Noah spun in a circle, nearly sending a skeleton flying off its hook. “Why don’t we do footstones anymore? I want a footstone. Put it eight feet back so people will think I was a giant.”

Blue opened her mouth to respond, but Noah darted on to the next house. In all the time they’d known him, he’d acted seventeen, though it hadn’t become a problem yet.

They followed at their normal pace. Ronan let Adam go and tore open his Snickers, wrestling with it to rip away half. Adam grinned invitingly. Ronan tossed it in the air, and Adam caught it in his mouth.

He tried to prepare a response, but all he could think was _finally._ Adam wouldn’t have told him unless he was really sure he had a solution, and the prospect had Ronan’s skin buzzing. He was sure his hands were shaking.

Henry’s phone buzzed. He frowned at it and stopped them before they walked up another driveway, this house void of decorations, but with chattering teenagers on the porch. Noah gleefully traded insults with one of them. 

“Hey, slight alteration to our plans. Jiang is asking for help with his wards before the crowd grows.”

“I don’t mind,” Blue said, “but don’t you run with people who can fix them?”

“Yeah. You. Do you not appreciate the international business?”

“I love it.”

Henry winked. “I’ll go pull the car around.”

It took a bare few steps for his back to disappear into the fog. Adam slipped his hand into Ronan’s. When Ronan looked down at him, he inclined his head, eyebrows raised.

“Wait. I haven’t really told any of you, have I?” Blue said. “I’ve been getting jobs outside the country since last Halloween.”

“That’s great,” Adam said. Not normally enough.

“It takes me away from Gansey, though,” she said, like an apology to all of them.

Adam shrugged one-shouldered. “We’re going to take a little walk.”

Blue bit her lip. Ronan didn’t want her to say sorry for living a whole life.

“Did you go to Ireland?” he asked.

Her lips twitched. Half in shadow, her features dramatized, she looked older than the last time he’d seen her. Ronan could see the slight lines she’d gained, the baby fat that had seeped away, a new maturity in her face, all changes since they’d been teenagers first venturing into Cabeswater. “I will this year. I’ll bring you back a trinket.”

“Bring me back bagpipes, coward.”

Blue laughed. “Don’t you already own them?” She flapped a hand. “Have fun, sweethearts. Henry will find you if you don’t rejoin us, but you’re not getting any more of my candy.”

She’d toss at least five more pieces at Ronan throughout the night, he knew. At some point, she’d taken his preferred way of showing affection as her own, consciously or not.

Beside her, Gansey looked neutrally pleasant, fiddling with the gold embellishments of his coat, but his silence the past few minutes was impossible to miss. Adam handed his soda to Blue, and she stuck it in her bucket, giving a two-fingered salute. Blue and Gansey went up the drive, and Adam tugged Ronan across the road.

“Did he say something to you?” Ronan asked.

“You didn’t hear Blue earlier? I think she spooked him with the marriage-talk.”

“No way.” Ronan paused. “Is he not going to propose?”

They only went a few feet before Adam pulled Ronan to the side again, ducking the drooping branches of a willow tree. His feet struck a gravel path, and Ronan remembered the little patch of woods dividing the neighborhood that they’d all stumbled through last year. 

“You see him more than I do. I wouldn’t know.”

Adam’s face came in flashes, moonlight uneven through the branches, stripes of tan skin and bright eyes. They slowed, and the quiet forest song pressed in. The last hums of insects before winter began to take root, a hooting owl above, the crunch of leaves beneath their boots.

“Maybe he’s going to be all proper about it,” Ronan said.

“Even though they were so destined they had an entire curse about them.”

“Gansey’s stupid like that.”

“Not like we’re engaged either.”

Ronan’s foot caught on something below, and he stumbled, free arm windmilling. Adam seized him in time to save him from falling face first into a pond. He cursed in one long stream. Adam laughed.

“Fuck you,” Ronan said, pretending his face wasn’t splitting into a grin.

“And this is when we need a light.”

Adam patted down his pockets for a phone he no longer owned, and Ronan dug into his overalls. The moment his fingers closed around the ghostlight, it flared to life, white and soft around the edges. Ronan set it free to bob above them. A reflection shifted in the pond; Ronan watched Adam’s gaze go to the stars, then back to him.

“By next Halloween,” Adam started, at the same time Ronan said, “Would you want to?”

They locked gazes. Adam’s mouth curled in that small, private way that made Ronan want to do something dangerous.

“Marry you?” Adam tried, as Ronan said, “You’ll find it?”

“I would consider it,” Adam teased, inclining his head. They both knew that wasn’t a conversation for now, but Ronan took Adam’s answer and tucked it away into his heart, fluttering like a bird trapped in his chest. “My magic is strongest on All Hallows’ Eve--and far more likely to work. I have my answer, the only question is whether or not I’ll be able to get to your dreamscape sooner than next year.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you if it works.”

“Don’t go pulling some self-sacrificial bullshit on me.”

Adam spread his arms wide. “What more do I have to lose?”

“A fucking lot, Parrish,” Ronan said. “Don’t sell your soul.”

_Not for me._

“Shut up,” Adam said, picking up on the implication, because of course he did.

Ronan caught Adam’s hands as he dropped them. Adam’s callused fingertips brushed the inside of his wrist, their palms pressed together. It felt like the grip of an oath being taken, fingers wrapped around each others’ wrists, the words to an unbreakable promise pushing to the front of Ronan’s mind.

His father had made him one years ago, when he’d woken up with a night horror clawing at his chest; that he’d never abandon Ronan to the things in his head. That he’d protect him.

Ronan did not trust such promises, magical or not.

He trusted Adam.

“I can wait a year, if that’s what it takes,” Ronan said. “I could wait eternity for you.”

Adam’s grip tightened. He searched Ronan’s face, his precious smile wavering. “I wouldn’t want you to. If this doesn’t work--” He pulled his hands free and caught Ronan’s face instead.

“What--”

Adam kissed him. He stepped in close until their chests were pressed together, one hand brushing over Ronan’s short hair, cupping the back of his head to kiss him deeper.

Ronan pushed him away by the shoulders. Still close enough to have Ronan’s blood rushing and heart pounding, but far enough that Ronan could _think._ He’d looked at Blue and seen the evidence of her aging, but Adam was nearly unchanged.

Neither of them had grown much since they first faded out of reality. Their bodies were suspended in stasis when they were asleep, and Ronan found no comfort in knowing that Adam shared his half-life. He’d pay any price to give Adam back his aspirations of Harvard, freedom, a job and life of his own.

“What will happen?” Ronan said evenly. “There’s always a price.”

“It’s not a permanent answer in the first place,” Adam started, “I’d have to find a way to keep us both awake--”

“Don’t lie.”

Adam sighed, tipping their foreheads together. Ronan closed his eyes, breathing steadily in time with him. “Getting into your dreamscape entails separating my spirit from my body. It happens when I scry, but--well, that’s what led to this in the first place. I did it for too long, and the connection between my body and spirit grew weak. For now, it’s just enough to gather magic and pull myself back together every once in a while. Getting into your head will intentionally separate me in a different way. It might sever that connection forever.”

“Don’t do it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Ronan held him firmly. “You can’t lose yourself before we get a chance to fix things--for both of us. What’s the point of you getting to be with me if we’re both still trapped?”

“Getting to be with you,” Adam shot back.

“Dumbass.”

“I don’t know if we’ll find an answer, but I know I can find a way to be with you. If that’s the only sure thing, then why put it aside for something doubtful?” Adam’s hands slid down to twist in Ronan’s shirt, and they were the only people in the world. Clinging to each other like lifelines. “Blue and Henry have their own lives. I made sure they wouldn’t be drowning in some endless mission to fix us, but I’m not sure that _I_ can fix us. I can hardly find anything in the spirit world.”

“Gansey’s trying. He’s too obsessed. I think he’s getting fucking depressed.”

Adam shook his head slightly. They stayed that way, heads bent together like swans, letting the world expand beyond them to the peace of night forest until Adam said, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“We have to.”

“Not now.” He shifted subtly. Ronan anticipated the kiss and met him in the middle. Adam kissed him chaste and soft as a gentle breeze. When he pulled away, Ronan brushed his thumb over Adam’s chapped lips, reverent. “Can we have a good night, and save the heartbreak for the end?”

That was how it went.

“They’re probably looking for us.”

“Probably.”

They didn’t move.

“Can I?” Ronan’s voice was hoarse, his throat clogged with emotion. He didn’t know that Adam would want to kiss him now--he wasn’t entirely sure what he himself wanted.

“Just hold me?” Adam answered.

Ronan tucked Adam’s face against his throat and held him close, humming lightly.

Adam laughed wetly. “You are not singing the Murder Squash song right now.”

He hummed louder, rocking them in place, an intimate dance. Warm tears stained his neck. Adam wrapped his arms around Ronan and squeezed him until he could hardly breathe.

An indeterminable amount of time later, the blare of Henry’s car horn made Ronan stop their swaying. He pressed a kiss to the crown of Adam’s head. “Do you want to go?”

Adam’s face was clear when they disengaged, like nothing had happened. Ronan swiped his thumbs under Adam’s eyes, the mask faltering for a heartbeat when Adam’s mouth twitched, and chose to take it as a good sign. “We’re supposed to be having fun, right?”

“I can think of better things to do than party with ex-Aglionby brats, but sure.”

Henry laid on the horn again.

“Alright, alright,” Adam said, plucking the ghostlight out of the air. He took Ronan’s hand and began the walk back. “He’s going to wake up half the neighborhood.”

“Anyone sleeping this early is old and senile, what are they going to do about it?”

Adam laughed, low and strained. It was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After dropping this on my dear friend and beta reader with no context and getting a series of WHY ARE THEY DEAD texts:
> 
> Them: i apologize to everyone that's gonna click this
> 
> Me: The surprise is part of the spooky season fun
> 
> Them: as a spooky season resident i resent this
> 
> I hope you enjoyed :)) Drop a comment or kudos if you did!


	2. we're reeling through the midnight streets

The house was on the outskirts of town, a large property with a sprawling yard filled with a maze of hedges and flower boxes, toilet paper draped everywhere from tree branches to rooftops. Colored lights shone through the great front windows. Shadows moved across the square of light on the dewy grass, the faint figures of people clutching drinks and talking. Where once as teenagers the music might have pulsed through the ground, the loudest sound was a joyous shout from two men running through the copse on the right.

Blue took in the neighborhood disbelievingly, all stuffy houses far apart with neat yards and no more decoration than a tasteful wreath or two. “This is Jiang’s party?”

“The Vancouver crew, but Jiang is hosting. He inherited his parents’ business. Apparently, he is doing very well,” Henry said, searching for a parking spot in the long line of cars. “Him and the rest of Joseph Kavinsky’s old pack bought the house together.”

_They want to stay in Henrietta forever?_ Blue almost continued, before reminding herself of the same thing she’d said to Henry earlier. Tact. Blue was hyper aware of her own uncertainty about Gansey’s feelings on the topic. He’d been a globetrotter at fifteen. An adventurer. Once she’d gotten a taste of other countries, she knew she could never stay still, so what did _he_ want?

“Will they be here?” Gansey asked, carefully light. He held her in his lap in the passenger seat, an arm across her waist over the seatbelt.

“Every year. It’s a full house, on Halloween.”

“You mean. . .” Blue said.

“Hey, not-psychic girl. You are not the only one capable of holding seances.”

“We did not hold a--” she started, then caught the amused curl of Henry’s mouth and sighed. “Is that going to be a problem?”

It was Ronan’s question to answer. Blue twisted to look at him, but he was leaning over Adam’s shoulder with his eyes fixed on Gansey’s phone, playing a game with Noah. She caught Gansey’s gaze instead.

God, he looked _tired._ With the growing bags under his eyes and the worry line between his brows, his skin washed out and pale.

Gansey pursed his lips. “We’ll confront that issue if it arises.”

Henry reached the end of the next house’s property and parked behind a car more offensively lime green than Gansey’s worst polo shirt. It seemed familiar, though Blue couldn’t place who it belonged to.

They unloaded from the car in all their mismatched slapdash costume glory. Henry popped the trunk and Blue deliberated over whether or not to bring the sword, as it’d only risk smacking into people and being a nuisance. It was a fine, wickedly curved thing--a cutlass that gleamed when she pulled it from its sheath. She pulled her bag out instead. Henry left his lacrosse stick behind on the same logic.

“Rainbow tie-dye is very classical pirate,” Henry teased.

Blue slung it across her body and shut the trunk. “Careful, you might find all your favorite shirts tie-dyed one day.”

“I look forward to it.”

Noah and Adam kicked leaves at each other on the way to the house, color flashing faintly in the glow from Gansey’s phone flashlight. Henry and Blue followed, taking in the dark houses and skinny, stripped young trees like giants’ spears stuck in the ground. Jutting branches and curled leaves.

“This is a terrible way to go about things,” Blue muttered to Gansey, at his side for a moment before falling behind. He didn’t stop her. She moved beside Ronan and decided the most sensible way to put things was bluntly, especially with him. Ronan arched a brow. “There is a slight possibility that Kavinsky and Prokopenko are going to be here.”

His brow notched higher. “I don’t remember their bones being buried directly on the line. Or either of them getting tied up in Cabeswater deals.”

Blue flapped a hand. She was becoming like her mother. “They might not be as solid or _them_ as Noah, and even he is--I don’t know that they’ll actually be here, just that Jiang might have summoned them--”

“Got it.”

She walked quickly to keep up with his long strides, waiting. Finally, Ronan bumped his elbow against her arm. Blue nodded back.

“Were you ever friends with the others?” Blue ventured. “Kavinsky’s group.”

“No.” He paused. “Friend _ly._ As much as they could be.”

Blue weighed pressing and letting it go, and settled on the latter.

When they were teenagers, she’d always _pressed._ The guilt over it had faded, but she still knew, factually, that it was one of the reasons her relationship with Adam had fallen apart, and why it had taken years for their group to fully settle in as a unit. Because her and Gansey pushed too hard, Ronan and Adam held back too much, and Henry and Noah were just out of reach in the ways that mattered.

They knew better now. She hoped. They trusted each other.

She touched the amulet, laying low over her shirt. “I bet you this gets warm by the end of the night. There’s no way we don’t get in trouble somehow.”

Ronan grinned, all sharp edges. “Why don’t we find it. Want to play whack-a-goblin?”

“It’s a wonder you survived long enough to meet me.”

The air cleared. They gathered on the porch, Henry ringing the doorbell and producing a silver flask from his pocket. A dim light resembling an old-fashioned oil lamp hung by the door, not quite bright enough for Blue to make out what the strange figure was in a tree just off the porch. She wrapped her arms around herself, near shivering, and locked eyes with two glowing orbs.

“Hello?” Blue waved nervously. It stared and stared, unblinking.

The front door swung open. A grinning man in a yellow suit and a tophat waved a cane at them, colored lights slowly changing from red to green to blue behind him. “Welcome to hell, esteemed enemies.”

“ _Jiang.”_ Henry beamed, doing a complicated handshake with him.

Blue couldn’t remember having seen Jiang since a run in with Kavinsky’s pack a few months after his death. He was a full adult now, and a witch in his own right. It was strange to see.

“Are you aware of the thing in your tree?” Gansey asked pleasantly.

“Oh, that’s just Bobby. He doesn’t bite.” Jiang accepted the flask from Henry. He didn’t stop smiling, eyes flitting from one of them to the next. “Most of the time.”

Music poured out, more cheesy Halloween tunes. A trio of women hung up their jackets and sang along to _Thriller_ in the foyer, accompanied by a host of other voices from the rest of the house.

“And this is only the start of the party?” Blue said.

“Everyone knows ours are the best. And Blue Sargent, a mere pirate? Not even a sexy one.” 

“What are you _?_ A well-dressed banana?”

Jiang threw his head back and laughed. “Bill Cipher. Childhood favorite character.”

“Charming,” Adam said flatly.

“Gay,” Jiang said gleefully, looking between Adam and Ronan’s switched clothes. “And uncreative.” He twirled his cane, considering. “Will the crowd interfere with your craft?”

He knew very well that it would. “Not at all,” Blue said coolly, unsurprised and unimpressed. She didn’t mean to discount whoever Jiang might have become, but his involvement with Kavinsky was unsettling, and he wasn’t off to a good start. Not exploding on him was doing him a favor.

Jiang’s broad, slightly maniacal grin didn’t waver. “Well, come on in, all.” Henry and Ronan didn’t hesitate, and Noah knocked shoulders affectionately with Jiang on his way by. “Dick Three, don’t mind me stealing your girl for a minute, do ya?”

Blue rolled her eyes. “I’ll be back soon.”

She waved off Gansey’s offers to accompany them, pushing him to make the rounds with Henry like he usually did, and followed Jiang outside to check his wards. He’d painted runes on the layer of stones and concrete on the bottom of all four sides of the house. Cleanly done, and with the right paint, as he explained. She expected it to be uncomfortable, but Jiang talked easily about nothing important while she worked, acting like they didn’t have any history.

She supposed they didn’t in any vivid way. . .

Things were still complicated.

That was that.

Blue poured vials of homemade revitalizer over the protective circle of mushrooms he’d planted around the house, an old technique for keeping out fae. Witch-run wikis had recently been discussing it. Few had the resources to find the proper way to grow them, so the debate over ingredients and types went on, but it seemed Jiang had figured it out.

“It’s smart,” she admitted, as they finished out back. “Planting the line so far from the house. Then you can walk around without worrying about it.” Jiang tapped his temple with a knowing look and offered her a sip from his flask. “Uh, I don’t trust that.”

“It’s from Henry, it’s not poison.”

“It’s from Henry, I don’t know what kind of weird side effects it has.”

Jiang took another sip. “That’s the fun of it.”

_Now_ it was awkward. The silence drew out as Blue stored her last vial. She patted her thighs and rose from her crouch, looking around the backyard, filled with tall plants spilling over onto a twisting cobblestone path. Even with the flashes of broken glass and crumpled cans, it was surprisingly beautiful. Well-stocked with anything Jiang might need. It was not what she’d expected of a group of ex-Aglionby brats. The most Aglionby of them all.

“You guys. . .you look like you have a good thing going,” Blue said. “Honestly, I was surprised you made your bed here.”

His eyebrows jumped. “I tried to leave. Kept coming back.” She understood. Cabeswater would have a rope around her ankle forever; what kind of rope were Jiang’s old ties? “Shit still happens. We make it work. You?” Jiang’s smile had finally abated, but his eyes were alight, watchful and eerie as a cat’s. Perceptive.

“We’ve still got trouble. We make it work.”

For a heartbeat, his smile was understanding and genuine. Blue returned it. 

“I’m surprised you aren’t all spending your days trying to pull Parrish and Lynch back.”

Blue blinked at him, taken aback and miffed. “I’m sorry?”

“Just curious. I don’t see them around much.”

“We did try. What do you know, anyway.”

“Henry’s my friend.”

She begged to differ. But maybe _friend_ meant something less all-consuming to him. Jiang’s grin made something spark furiously in her chest, and she knew he’d collected his information in other ways. “For two years after they both went under, we tried. There was just nothing we could do. Adam said it was permanent.”

Jiang hummed.

“ _What,”_ Blue snapped.

“Witchy witchy girl, you gave up?”

In some twisted way, in brief moments of sideways/wrong/uncanny, he reminded her of Henry. A version of him turned upside down, from another life, where he’d ended up with a group of people just as supernatural as them, on the opposite side. Their foils.

“I haven’t,” she said, sharp and concise, everything she needed in those two words. Her and Gansey had a plan, even if not a perfect one.

Jiang raised his hands in surrender, grin going cold and feral. “Didn’t mean to pry. Thanks for the help.” He twirled his cane around, a substantial weight to it. It looked like more than a prop. “I hear you’re pulling big business now.”

Blue bit down on a retort and drew up the persona she’d grown for treacherous waters. Casual confidence, apathetic and amused. A goddess who had no need to impress, a queen who’d already secured the throne. She wished she had that sword now. High and mocking, she said, “And what does that mean, dear?”

“Witches know all. Between psychics, mind readers, and some very clever familiars, it’s hard to keep secrets in our circles.”

She arched a brow. “Don’t fuck with me.”

“Jesus, it’s not a threat,” Jiang said, leaning away. He had a head of height on her, but she could be the intimidating one if need be. “I just meant--Seondeok’s old people. You ran a mission with them. I didn’t think you were the type to wander into the underworld.”

Blue kept her expression carefully blank. She’d never mess with the collectors, or anyone else that fell into the category of ‘magical mafia’, but Jiang didn’t seem to be lying.

“Are you looking to cash in?” Blue asked.

“No,” he answered immediately. “Swan would kill me. I had enough of that shit with Kavinsky.”

She turned it over and over in her head. There _had_ been a curious job a few months ago to ward an art gallery. A trio of people in expensive clothes, distant but polite, had given her a tour and asked extensively about her skillset. She’d assumed they were the owners, but had planned to return for a visit and found none of them on the website’s staff list. Still, Henry had referred her, so it didn’t even cross her mind to be suspicious until now.

Blue nodded sharply, relaxing. “My business is my business.” She filed it all away for later, softening as Jiang did. “But I’m. . .sorry. For what you went through, back then. Magic was kinder to us.”

“From the stories I’ve heard, it wasn’t.”

“At least it helped. It gave us beauty and wonder. Power to fight the consequences. All you got were the worst parts, and nothing to make it worth it.”

Jiang twirled his cane again, bobbing slightly, energy contained, like her words had affected him but he had no right response. “Like I said. Shit happens.”

_Aglionby_ as he had been, _Kavinsky’s_ as he had been, Jiang had been part of the Vancouver crew too. The people that Blue had clicked in with, an overlap in their worldview. Breaks in the mold among American dream monsters. 

“I’m sorry we weren’t the kindest to you,” Jiang continued. “Maybe I’m still not someone you’d like, but I’ve changed.” He waggled his fingers, and tiny vines grew up from his palm. “Magic of my own helped.”

She couldn’t honestly say that she did like him now, but the slate was wiped clean. “It forces you to connect to everything differently,” she acknowledged instead.

Jiang held out a hand. There was an understanding between them only two witches could have; nature, people, love, death, the intricacies and preciousness of it all, was different through their eyes. Behind them were generations who had fought back to back through persecution.

Blue clasped arms with him. He was right, she still didn’t _like_ him, but maybe going easy on him would help her take the thorn Kavinsky had stuck out of her heart. 

And then she did say it. “Can we start over?”

The beat of the music pulsed through Ronan’s veins. Here was an alternate dimension he’d long left. Dancing, chatter, red solo cups crumpled in corners and kitchen countertops crowded with bottles. (How much of the mess was from the party, and how much from before?) Most of the partygoers were gathered in the living room, clumped together with friends. Ronan had no interest in making any new ones, and was content to look through the selection of drinks and ignore them in the kitchen.

It was smaller than it should’ve been for the house’s size, but cozier for it. A touch old-fashioned and messy. Wood paneling, dishes stacked in the sink, a refrigerator from the 80s, bug-littered lights under the cabinets. A wallpaper eyesore of grapevines wrapped around fence posts scribbled over with Sharpie notes, rude words and ruder sketches.

“Want to say hello?” Adam asked, carefully clearing a spot among the snack bowls and sitting up onto the kitchen table. It was surrounded by mismatching chairs, all filled with plastic bags and paper towel rolls. Noah rooted shamelessly through the fridge, despite the fact that he couldn’t eat. He was just a nosy fuck. Gansey and Henry had been pulled into a side room to talk to old acquaintances, but Ronan had elected to stay behind.

He picked out a bottle of soda and caught the cups Adam tossed at him. “You think I want to talk to ex-Aglionby business major pricks?”

“They’d be out of college by now.”

“That’s their category for life.”

Adam chuckled, eyes warm, tracking Ronan’s every move. He poured a drink for Adam, then for himself, skipping the alcohol. The weight of Adam’s attention was enough to have him awake and on edge, his skin prickling. He handed Adam his cup, their fingers brushing.

“And what would you have been?” Adam said, smiling small and knowing.

“An expert in skipping class,” Noah piped up.

Ronan raised his cup at Noah. “Spot on.”

“Art major,” Adam decided for him.

Noah slammed the fridge, bottles clinking inside. “He’s a farmer.”

“Hmm, but you don’t need to learn any more agriculture. Maybe environmental science.”

The thought of being in college with Adam gave him mixed feelings. He wouldn’t have gone, greywaren troubles or not, but he felt a stab of regret at the fact that they’d been so far apart in the year and a half before Adam lost himself scrying. The slight inward curl of Adam’s posture and the downturn of his mouth told Ronan he was getting dragged down by daydreams and _what ifs._

“Why don’t _you_ want to talk to your old buddies,” Ronan said.

Adam shrugged one-shouldered. “I never much liked our classmates either. I just wanted to be like them so much that I didn’t realize what bullshit it was to idealize them.”

The sliding door behind the kitchen table opened, Blue and Jiang appearing out of the dark. Adam turned to grab a cup of pudding covered in crushed oreos and gummy worms, evading an awkward cut off in the conversation to tip Jiang off.

“Hi again,” Noah said brightly.

Adam’s expression turned blank. He didn’t like the old pack either. Ronan found it amusing.

“You didn’t kill him,” Ronan said, congratulatory. 

Blue took him off guard with her laugh. “Witches gotta stick together.”

Jiang grinned, pearly teeth bared. His raven hair was slicked back under his hat, a four-leaf-clover tattoo on his ivory cheekbone, fitting the part more than Blue usually did with her cobbled gremlin outfits and kind-stranger-at-a-bus-stop attitude.

The truth about magic had come out over the centuries, in some places sooner than others, and had only settled into something less war-inducing in the past fifty or so years. There was less reason to hide it, but Jiang looked in favor of flaunting his abilities. Ronan had learned to hide before he even understood his powers. His family ran back past the time of Glendower as greywarens and dream thieves, but they’d always kept quiet about it.

Maybe that was a mistake. It was thanks to witches like Blue’s ancestors, and Blue’s and others' constant advocation, that magic users could live in some semblance of peace, if they picked the right places and people and ignored the news.

“I see you already broke into the drinks,” Jiang said. Ronan wanted to burn his gaze off his skin. “What can I get you, Sargent?” He scooped up a bottle of vodka near Ronan’s elbow, and Ronan nearly snarled, stepping closer to Adam. “Something classic?”

“I’ll pass. Drinking makes me sleepy.”

“You’re getting old. How ‘bout a coffee?”

Ronan exchanged a glance with Adam, whose eyebrows were arched over the top of his cup. Blue accepted, and Jiang set to making it, striking up conversation with Noah. Ever the _gracious_ host. Something was happening there.

Adam wrapped a hand around Ronan’s elbow, pulling him into his side, and held up a spoonful of gummy worms. “Want these?” 

Some of the tension bled out of him. Half of him wanted to walk away from Jiang, completely leave the party, and half of him was anchored to the spot, wanting to talk to him. He settled for keeping Jiang in his sights and sharing the pudding cup with Adam, trying not to react every time Jiang exchanged a joke with Blue and Noah.

Gansey and Henry returned soon enough, silent and slightly tense. No one could ask why, not with an outsider there. Jiang set out several mugs and handed a mushroom-painted one to Blue, seeming to sense the turning mood.

“Creamer’s in the fridge door.” Jiang clapped Henry on the shoulder and peered at a clock on the back wall. “I’ve gotta scram. The rest of the crew’s around here somewhere.”

Ronan didn’t know what _crew_ he meant, but it didn’t matter. Jiang was leaving either way. 

“A pleasure, as always,” Henry said.

“Likewise.” Jiang tipped his hat at them. “Come again next year, Czerny. I’ll see the rest of you soon.” He didn’t acknowledge Ronan at all, hardly even spared a glance his way the whole time.

“Next year,” Noah agreed, fist-bumping him.

Jiang strut out of the room, ugly yellow coattails flapping.

Adam smirked. “Shut up,” Ronan said, and hid behind a deep pull from his soda.

“You looked comfortable,” Gansey said to Blue. “Did you reach an agreement?”

She sighed. “Don’t be jealous, darling.”

“Never.”

They smiled at each other.

“So what the fuck was that,” Ronan said.

Blue took orders in silent points and eyebrow raises, and poured out two cups of coffee. “He’s still a dick,” Blue said. “But I could use an ally with so many herbs in his backyard.”

Ronan snickered approvingly. “That’s cold.”

“I like him,” Noah said. It was a reminder of who Noah was when he was alive; far more similar to Jiang than them.

Ronan jerked his chin at Henry. “What do you think.”

“Oh, what are complicated opinions among friends.”

He wished the vote was more unanimous, but Noah was the only one that gave him the impression of _trusting_ Jiang, an uncrossable line, and he wouldn’t be in danger of getting into a situation for it. Ronan scowled and left it alone.

Blue dug a pair of vials out of her bag and shook them until they turned sickly green, faintly glowing. Ronan pretended to gag as she dumped them into the mugs before handing one to Henry.

“This looks radioactive,” Henry said.

Blue sipped her coffee and winced. “Energy potion. Doesn’t taste that bad, it just takes a minute of getting used to.”

Henry stared into his mug and hesitantly took a sip. “Tastes like. . .glowstick.”

Adam snorted. “How do you know what glowsticks taste like?”

“Never ask a man about his trauma.”

“It’s salty,” Noah offered, though Ronan couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

They stood around the kitchen for a few minutes, passing around a bowl of chips and talking while the occasional people popped in and out. Ronan refused to budge as they approached, one man backing out of the kitchen again at the sight of his glare. Blue hid a laugh in Gansey’s shoulder.

“You’re a menace,” Adam said.

“You love me.”

Blue clapped her hands, finished with her coffee and potion abomination. “We should dance.”

“Who’s the DJ?” Ronan asked, and Noah picked up, “We have a song request.”

Henry gestured with his nearly empty mug. “Murder squash is outlawed.” He went to set it down, but Blue caught his wrist and moved the mug right back up to his face. Henry narrowed his eyes at her and drank the final bit. “I have moves. I learned how to waltz this year, who wants a lesson?”

“Isn’t knowing how to waltz a prerequisite to being an Aglionby rich kid,” Adam said.

“Nah, you’re confusing that with bribery,” Ronan said. “Even Gansey has that skill.”

“Woah, woah,” Henry started. “What is this tale?”

Gansey shook his head adamantly from his spot leaning against the fridge. “It was a difficult situation.”

“Oh-kay, losers. Dancing or no dancing?” Blue cut in.

“I’ll take a waltz lesson,” Noah said. Though it was quiet, Ronan immediately recognized the beginning to ‘ _Ghostbusters’_ in the room next door. Noah perked up. “The perfect song.”

Henry laughed, agreeing, and they peered into the living room. It was even more full than before, but beside the kitchen was a trio of steps back down to the foyer level where a room three times the size was left fairly empty. A pool table was pushed to the side, couches up against the wall, and a large tv set up. The space had been cleared for partygoers, and speakers against the far wall played the same song.

They decided on the game room instead. Ronan finished the last of his soda and tossed out the cup, turning back to find Adam waiting at the top of the stairs. He only moved once Ronan did. Warmth curled in his chest.

Of course, his first dance was Adam. Henry was dramatically leading Noah around, and Adam held up his arms in a mirror. Ronan rolled his eyes but stepped in, letting Adam take him by the waist and hand and waltz him around Blue and Gansey’s bird-mating-display of a dance, flapping their coats and bobbing their heads. 

“Stop stepping on my feet, Parrish,” Ronan said.

“I can’t help it in your clunky boots. These weigh like ten pounds.”

“Only ten?”

Adam stepped up on Ronan’s feet in response, pressing their chests together. Ronan went with it, grabbing him by the waist instead so he could step back and forth, moving both their feet. Adam laughed into his neck and stayed there, his head on Ronan’s shoulder.

Ronan kissed the crown of his head. He remembered waltzing merrily together in the kitchen at the Barns, sun streaming through the windows, feeling so still. Still, still, at peace. He was born in the institution of dreaming, hand on his heart, hand on his stupid heart, (was that a poem Adam had read to him once? Scrawled in a letter?), like dreaming was the true form of his existence and being with Adam let him slip back toward it.

“Ro?” Adam whispered, barely audible over the music. The bass buzzed through him so close to the speakers. Ronan hummed, and Adam raised his head, lashes dusting across his freckled cheeks, eyes fluttering open--and he couldn’t deny that _look._

Ronan kissed him soundly. Could this be a dream too? Could he recreate this when he went back to sleep? He memorized the feel of a heart beating against his own and cotton against cotton shirt and leather over a firm back, a form steady and unbreakable even in the battering of Cabeswater’s worst storms turning pliant beneath him. Malleable as clay.

The music changed, something with an ominous clash of instruments, and Adam stepped off, twisting Ronan into a spin before he knew what was happening. He bumped into Blue, and she stole him away. It took a minute for his brain to come back online, blindly stumbling along with whatever steps she led him in, watching Adam over her head. Adam smiled, brilliant as the sun, and Ronan thought that this must be a dream, it must be.

He imitated Blue’s strange moves from earlier, before slowly devolving into shuffling back and forth around Gansey, crouched with their hands up forming pinchers. Ronan weathered the embarrassment for Adam’s amusement. 

“Ah. Carcinisation,” Gansey said. Adam laughed, sudden and loud. Blue playfully lurched toward Ronan and snapped her hand at him. He dodged and put Gansey between them once more, who explained, “Nature has made many attempts to turn non-crabs into crabs. It is making yet another attempt before our eyes.”

Blue giggled, and Ronan pinched her arm while she was distracted.

“Hey!” she cried, swooping forward to wrap Ronan up like a fish falling victim to an octopus, pinning his arms to his sides. He fought to free himself while she cackled, her grip surprisingly powerful. “C’mon! Are you even trying?”

Ronan tickled her side, and she flinched, letting him wrench his right arm free. Henry pulled Adam into his exaggerated waltz, while Noah jumped around and Gansey returned to his natural state of dad moves. Blue released him in favor of taking his hands, moving him back and forth with her to the music.

“Now _this_ is what we came for,” she said. Her light brown cheeks were flushed, dark eyes dancing with mischief and pure joy. It was the best Ronan had felt all night. The initial vivid sense after waking up had faded, but a new feeling had taken root. His pulse thundered in his veins, a smile pulling at his lips.

Blue’s eyes caught on something behind him.

She looked away quickly. Too quickly. Her gaze cutting back to Ronan, happiness clipped for a half-second before she recuperated, trying to cover it up. Ronan started to turn. Blue’s hand tightened on his arm. He hesitated, and looked anyway.

Kavinsky and Prokopinsky stared back at him. Pale and faded out, hazy around the edges, a laser of light from upstairs shining straight through Kavinsky’s blank expression to the ground.

Ronan’s stomach bottomed out.

It was a natural reaction. A well-earned one.

Kavinsky turned away and shuffled up the stairs, Proko and the rest of his pack around him. Jiang glanced over, apologetic. Ronan glared. They disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Blue said. “I thought we wouldn’t--I thought there was a chance we could get through the night without--”

“It’s fine.”

His voice was steadier than he thought it’d be. The perfection of the moment was shattered, but Ronan felt alright. A coil of tension in his chest unwound. It was a relief. He realized now that he’d been waiting for that moment since he first knew Jiang was hosting for the crew and pack.

“I’ve made my peace with him,” Ronan said. It was the truth. It didn’t make seeing him any less of a shock, but it was the truth. “I need a drink.”

Blue stared up at him, lips pursed. “I’ll grab one too.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.” A line of worry worked between her brows. Ronan ruffled her spiky hair. “Go dance with your leech, he’s making a fool of himself.”

She didn’t stop him; maybe she knew he needed it.

Ronan stalked back up to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He’d heard the clink earlier, and found a case of beers, as expected. Behind the fridge was the door Gansey and Henry had gone through earlier, where voices now floated out from the pack.

He took the case and made his way inside, not giving himself a moment to think. Kavinsky and Proko were sitting on an old couch, the others arranged around the small office on chairs or the floor. They fell silent at the sight of him.

It was selfish. It was pointless. Ronan knew nothing but that he _needed._

He put the case in the center of the room and drew out two bottles. One, he handed to Kavinsky. Was it to mock him? He didn’t feel vindicated. The boy’s fingers were cold and not fully solid, but he took it. _The boy._ Seventeen and a shell of his former self. Maybe it was better that way. 

Kavinsky’s eyes bored into his, fathomless. His smirk was a cheap knock-off of the original, a suggestion of an imitation, no real danger behind it. It used to be a threat in itself. A challenge; for a race, a fistfight, destruction. Now Ronan looked and felt nothing.

The second beer, Ronan raised in a toast. “Happy Halloween.”

He turned and left.

It hurt a little less.

“What are you doing?” Henry waited just around the corner, shoulder to the fridge. “Adam--correction, everyone--would not want you to start a fight.”

Ronan shouldered past him. “I’m not starting shit.”

Henry followed just behind, his stare boring into the back of Ronan’s head. Ronan swiped a bottle opener off the counter, resolutely ignoring him, and gave a cool look back.

“You never told me the full story,” Henry said quietly.

“But someone else told you, so why ask?”

“I want to know what’s in your head.”

Ronan popped the cap and tossed it in the trash. “That’s in the past.”

Henry stayed silent, but his analyzing expression didn’t fade. Ronan hated scrutiny. From Gansey, Henry, Blue. They always had to _ask,_ when most of the time what Ronan needed was someone to just _be there._ He’d tell on his own time.

“Ronan--” Henry started.

“I gotta piss.”

He walked away, finding a staircase by the living room. Henry followed him up.

“Wait, I need to speak with you--about something else. I need your help.”

Ronan paused on the landing, hand tightening on the neck of his bottle. “What.”

He waited. Henry’s answer came slow and pained, “I ran into some old. . .associates. Collectors. From my mother’s circles.”

“The fuck?” Ronan whipped around. Henry stared uncertainly at his collarbones, his jaw set and hands curled tight, half into his pockets. “No. You stay out of that shit.”

“I do not have much of a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Henry shook his head, eyes shining in the low light. “Not truly.”

“Why don’t you talk to Blue about it? Or anyone. Getting tied up in that will kill you.”

“I know.” His voice was a bare wisp of sound. Ronan had always known that Henry was a good liar, but he’d thought he was better yet at sussing them out. It seemed that all Henry’s boundless energy was an easy cover up for issues. Henry’s shoulders slumped, defeated, but he met Ronan’s hard gaze. “I can handle things on my own. My business and my friendships are separate.”

“You’re asking me.”

“You are part of my business. You gift me half my artifacts. They have nothing to do with this, and it is not their burden to bear.”

_That’s dumb as fuck,_ Ronan wanted to say, then, _we’re your friends._ “You getting murdered is our burden. And if you’re in trouble, we’re all in trouble.”

Henry smiled ruefully. “A new event is coming up. The largest artifact show in more than a decade. I have been asked to bring a particular set of items requested by the most powerful collectors in the trade, all facilitated by a new group of middlemen. They have psychics. Scryers. There is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. I hope you understand, I do not wish to ask this of you, but--”

“I’ll do you one better,” Ronan said, thinking of how he and Adam had driven Greenmantle out of town. How he’d brought his night horrors out to fight for him. Anyone who tried to lay a hand on Henry, he’d rip to pieces.

Then. He remembered.

He couldn’t be there.

“What?” Henry asked, eyebrows furrowed. Not understanding.

Ronan inhaled through his nose, exhaled through his mouth. Smoker’s breath. He pushed past Henry, ignoring his calls after him, and searched for a quiet place. Again and again, he walked away. It was all he could do. 

  
  


“This was an awful idea.”

“I did ask him. He said it was fine.”

Gansey shook his head. “We should have gone home.”

“I _asked._ Ronan knows himself,” Blue said. _He won’t go all sacrificial just so we can have a little fun. Not like you._ “And it’s been a fine night so far, hasn’t it?”

She swayed with Gansey to the sound of gothic music, organs and low singing, reaching up to smooth his frown with her thumb. He looked down at her, hair falling into his eyes. “It has,” he said cautiously, like he’d jinx it. Blue smoothed the lines on his forehead. “I wish he’d told one of us what he was doing.”

“I think he just needed to see Kavinsky. Alone.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“You’re not the same person,” Blue said. She sidled closer, trying to reassure him, but she was concerned herself, and she couldn’t hide it well enough.

“I’m going to check on him. Without his notice, if possible.” Gansey frowned again. “I’m sorry, I--”

“No, no. Go. I’ll come after you in a bit if you don’t return.”

Gansey sighed and leaned down to press a chaste kiss to her lips.

That kiss had killed him, once, and only the sink of Piper Greenmantle’s fangs, her blood in Gansey’s mouth had saved him. Blue didn’t know what she’d meant to do. Take Gansey, someone shining and golden, for her own? For her amusement? Perhaps. She had lived a long time before she took Colin as a thrall, and when he’d turned out to be a bit too cowardly for her taste. Did she wish for a king in her grasp instead?

Being a ley line king was no grand thing. An honor for favored faerie knights who stayed away from the rest of the magical world, who they knew next to nothing about. No one--not Blue, not her psychic family, not the Witch Council or the fae--ever considered it in the cards for a human to be crowned by the lines. No one had been watching. No one was there to stop it.

Not that it had done Gansey much good. He wasted his days in Monmouth, undead, and was given no castle or power, no subjects or help. Being a ley line king was a stack of responsibilities not balanced out for the ley line’s service, as their assistance was only to feed back into supporting what Gansey did for them. He wasn’t even invited to the meetings Persephone, the only fae Blue had ever known, had told her about once.

Blue wasn’t sure why at the time. Persephone had spoken out of nowhere about the rulers exchanging advice and information, working together to strengthen their lines. The half-gone wisp of a woodland faerie-siren-human had to have known what would become of Gansey, and all of them.

Blue smoothed her fingertips through the hair by Gansey’s temple, feeling her heartbeat stronger than the music, and nodded back at him as he pulled away. She patted his chest (no heartbeat, no heartbeat), and watched him go.

Noah slid into her sights, doing a warped version of the macarena. He had a look in his eyes like he knew it all, even now, and he was bent on distracting her. Blue let him lighten her heart, twirling each other around the room, dragging Adam with them and stumbling over each others’ feet. It only took a song of trying to keep up with Noah to tire them.

“Alright, I’m out,” Adam panted, collapsing onto the couch.

Blue slowed down, trying to get her breath back. Noah danced easily still.

“Not fair,” Blue said. Noah moved closer, and Blue wound her arms around his neck, dancing half-heartedly around with him. She felt the sting of guilt at having talked to Gansey far more than Noah. Though she missed them all, Noah was the one she wouldn’t see for another year, and yet he seemed to keep fading into the background.

“Perks of being a ghost,” Noah said. She wished she could see his face. He pulled her through the waltz steps, laughing when she slumped against him in exhaustion. Blue curled her fingers in the sheet.

“It feels like yesterday that we were just kids.”

Noah tilted his head and spinned her lazily around. “Not even a week.”

The realization was a bucket of icy water over her head, that what had been more than five years to them since Gansey’s death and Noah’s passing-on was five _days_ to Noah.

“Is it really--I mean, you--”

She tried to think of things from his point of view. Waking up, spending the time having fun with his friends, then sleeping and waking up and doing it again. Observing their changes, the nonsensical twists and turns in their interactions. All that time was nothing.

Noah shrugged. “More or less.”

Or maybe he remembered the spirit world in between. He’d never told her about it. She’d only asked the first Halloween--what he remembered, how he was. He’d described a winding darkness like a poisoned Cabeswater, and didn’t speak of it again.

“I cannot believe it has come to this--” Henry hopped down the stairs, bottles of water tucked against his chest, “--but I don’t enjoy these parties the way I used to. Who wants to deal with strangers? Worse than just any strangers. _Peers_. All I need is you.”

Blue groaned as Noah tried to coax her into another spin, tipping into Henry. “Right? I’ve successfully kept away from them.”

“Dance with me,” Noah said, making grabby hands at her.

Blue shook her head, swiping a bottle from Henry. “Darling, I’m about to pass out. Too much jumping.”

“I’ve got you,” Henry said, maneuvering her to the couch. He lowered her beside Adam, passing a bottle to him and putting the rest on the end table. Blue caught his wrist as he moved away, something off in his expression. His hands were shaking.

“Who did you run into?”

“Some people I haven’t spoken to since high school.”

Adam straightened. “They say something?”

“Well, of course. It would have been very awkward otherwise.”

Blue huffed, releasing him. She didn’t want to pry, but she didn’t know what else to do. Henry waltzed with Noah through the next song despite it’s heavy, quick beat, both of them slowly turning more serious about it. Blue sank into the couch, dropping her head on Adam’s shoulder.

“Ronan should be back by now,” Adam said.

“He probably needed a minute alone. And Gansey went after him.”

Adam nodded against the top of her head.

She could tell him now. The impulse surged, finally breaking free from where she’d buried it, waiting for the right moment. Gansey and her had ideas--not answers, not necessarily, but something to show for all their time on earth while Adam was lost. Henry had researched and cross-checked and approved them himself, with all his expertise in the use of artifacts and anchoring of magic.

But that was why she had to wait. It wouldn’t be right to break the news alone.

Blue closed her eyes. They sat in peace for another minute before cold hands grabbed at Blue, and she was hauled to her feet beside Adam. Noah’s eyes crinkled at her protest.

“O captain, my captain,” Henry sing-songed, doing a dreadful impression of a robot. “May I have this dance?”

“Hmm, not if you’re going to dance like that.”

“Says the girl who went crab earlier.”

“It was _ironic.”_

Noah took hold of Adam, and Henry drew himself up, jokingly proper. Blue curtsied. He took a deep bow and offered his hands. Off they went, every corner of the spacious room their dancefloor. 

“Have you had any trouble this year?” Henry asked mildly. “With your magic dealings and all.”

“A few situations. A few people. Nothing big though, mostly clients not understanding that I can only do certain types of magic.”

There was a slight edge to his smile. Jittery energy just this side of unexceptional. “Run across any special artifacts?”

“Anything I could, I passed on to you.” Blue eyed him, a question sitting heavy on her tongue, though she couldn’t articulate it. “What’s going on?”

Henry pulled her into a dip that had her clutching at his jersey for dear life. “A big sale is approaching that I want to prepare for. Honestly, I’m a little nervous.” He set her back on her feet, and Blue smacked his chest.

“I can help. With organizing, facilitating, whatever you need.”

“It will be rather far from here.”

“Where?”

“Thank you, Blue, but I can handle it.”

“You should let her,” Noah said abruptly. He wasn’t dancing anymore, just staring.

Henry stilled. “She--you have your own work to attend to.”

Noah didn’t move, looking like a freeze frame of a horror movie. A figure under a sheet among covered furniture, looming up before the idiot protagonist.

Adam slid in smoothly, “Why don’t we go get more chips?”

Blue looked between Henry and Noah. “Yeah. Sure.”

She retrieved her water and another for Ronan, belatedly remembering she needed to ask Henry about those odd people in the art gallery. But with the rare stretch of fair mood, she was reluctant to talk more business. Blue filed it away for later, slinging an arm around Noah. She broke his stare down with Henry, and led him up the stairs.

Ronan didn’t think of himself as the type to _wallow,_ but the type to _do._ He was a reactor. Always physical, always with his heart on his sleeve if you knew where to look, always feeling too much and finding his outlets too little. Having his time limited forced him to manage it in a new way. It cut his allowances for dallying and losing himself, and instead he could only be _on,_ or it would feel like a waste.

But it was so, so tiring.

He nursed a beer sitting at the top of the deck steps, staring out at the dark yard. Gansey propped himself up with his hands, head tipped back against the darker sky. Ronan was content to sit in silence. To gather his thoughts and parse through them without feeling like he was throwing time away with his family.

“I can feel the gears turning,” Ronan said, casting a glance at Gansey. He didn’t look back, his eyes searching the glimmering masses. Ronan turned through his own thoughts, methodical as possible, allowed to breathe and consider. “Did Adam tell you?”

He was practically buzzing, waiting to spill, but something kept him quiet. “Tell me what.”

Gansey didn’t continue. “Just say it, man.”

“We ought to wait.” He shifted his gaze to Ronan. “I’m sorry we came. There are plenty of other things we could have planned--”

“Gansey.”

Gansey’s mouth snapped shut. Ronan knew what he was asking, and he knew Gansey didn’t _really_ want to know. He didn’t like such complicated, nonsensical things--and Ronan knew that it was--and he didn’t like Kavinsky or the side of Ronan that had gotten away from him. Scribbling outside his neat lines. Gansey liked things clean and pure, and his desire for a perfect world had persisted in him even when he couldn’t turn away from all the blood stains and black hearts.

“I know you think Kavinsky would’ve burned himself down eventually,” Ronan said, “but it wasn’t an inevitable ending--fuck, I’m using your words. I’m not over it, but I’m over it _enough._ It doesn’t keep me up at night anymore.” He flashed his teeth. “Not that many things could.”

He heard the glass door slide open. Gansey looked back, the sharp line of his shoulders loosening at the sight of Blue leaning in the doorway, silhouetted against the kitchen lights.

“Would you like to?” Gansey asked her, sitting up.

“As good a time as any, I suppose.”

Behind her, Henry was throwing a bag of chips at Adam. She waved Henry over and stepped out onto the deck while Adam said something to Noah, small and smug. He’d shucked off Ronan’s jacket, bare arms on display. Noah leaned closer, and a moment later, Adam tossed his head back and laughed.

“Here, Lynch.” Blue pushed a bottle of water into his hands, sitting on his other side. Henry shut the door on Adam and Noah and stepped down around Gansey to lean against the railing, looking at each of them, sharp and expectant.

“This feels like a family meeting I don’t want to be part of,” Ronan said.

Blue rolled her eyes. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? We’re trying to help you. It’s taken a long time because we were idiots who kept trying to find a magical solution to your dreaming and Adam’s spirit break. There is none. You know that. What we need is ways to ease you back little by little, not some perfect answer.”

“We need you to procure a dream object capable of gathering magic,” Henry continued. “One we can place on a ley line to pull it in.”

Ronan’s thoughts came slow and fractured. He was struck dumb. Of course, he knew Gansey was obsessed, but he hadn’t thought the others were actively trying to help him--and he hadn’t minded. He wanted them to have their own lives. But all along, they _had_ been searching too.

One glaring thought awakened him. “And how’s that going to work,” he said, eyeing Henry. “Whoever has the object can use the magic however they want? Doesn’t sound safe.”

“I can help with my own spells,” Blue said. “We won’t be stealing anything. Think less ‘collect’ and more ‘anchor’. Creating a power hotspot. That way, whenever you wake up, you can use that gathered magic to get Adam. And if this works to the full extent I hope it will, that hotspot will give both of you enough constant energy to slowly heal your abilities.”

“You know what causes--whatever is going on with my dreaming?”

“No,” Gansey admitted. Ronan had been awaiting his input, watching the creases in his expression. “But I have theories. I believe the ley line has decided that your purpose was fulfilled after we dealt with the demon. There is no more high-stakes defense to be done, and Cabeswater is attempting to keep you in waiting until the next time it needs you. Perhaps the same with Adam, because of the deal he made. It’s stopping him from healing.”

Ronan set his beer and water at his feet, leaning back on his hands like Gansey had, keeping himself open and casual, movement for the sake of something to do. His stomach was tightening, winding and winding, an itch in his knuckles for something to put them through. “So I have to beg the trees for our lives back.”

“Maybe,” Blue said. “One thing at a time.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Baby steps,” Henry picked up, his tone vaguely dismissive and calm. No pity in it. It settled Ronan, somehow. “The last time you were awake with Adam was last Halloween, correct? That is something we can certainly right. Other things come after.”

Ronan grit his teeth, shoving down all the useless feelings of helplessness. “Don’t worry about me. I want you to wake up Adam as much as you can, and I want him to have a choice in when. And what I _really_ need is to see Noah more than once a fucking year.”

“That’s all I spend my time searching for,” Gansey said. “I’m going to figure it out.”

“No, you gotta get out of the house, Gansey. You have to have a life too, or what’s the point?”

Gansey gave a self-deprecating smile. “Well, technically I’m--” Blue reached around Ronan to clasp Gansey’s shoulder, shushing him. “It’s alright.”

Blue held a hand out toward Henry. “We’re making a pact.”

“On?” Henry said mildly, and took it.

“You and I are going to swear to find a way to bring Noah from the spirit world ‘ _more than once a fucking year’._ And we’re going to find more little solutions until we can figure out how to get through to Cabeswater. _”_

“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said.

“Gansey, you’re banned from the search.”

He straightened, alarmed. “I have research already--”

“This is our mission,” Blue said.

Gansey opened his mouth and Ronan pinched his thigh, a surprised sound coming out instead. His expression clouded over, a swirl of emotion. Ronan recognized that tick in his jaw. The look behind his eyes that said no matter if he let it go now, this wasn’t the end of it. Gansey put his mask on smoothly, but Ronan already knew a fight was ahead as Blue and Henry recited their new pact.

The door slid open once more.

“Enjoying yourselves without us?” Adam called.

Henry and Blue released each other, turning in disturbing unison to smile lightly back at Adam. Noah and Adam crossed the deck, the wind sending Noah’s sheet flapping around him. For a moment, he looked like he was floating. Then he came down, still wispy and bony like that wind could blow him a way with the autumn leaves, and his eyes were locked on Ronan. Always knowing.

Ronan was compelled to shift his gaze to Adam. _Are you going to tell them? This is the time,_ he said in a weighted look. Adam absorbed it, blank-faced, and said, “If we’re all out here, it seems like the party charms have wilted. Ready to go home?”  
Blue glanced at Ronan. He didn’t react. She took it as the answer it was, and explained the dream object to Adam. How simple the idea was, and how simply sensical. Blue had been right in saying that they’d been aiming too high, throwing out any ideas of accommodation in favor of total solutions--now they were onto something.

Adam didn’t have much to say. A question about what the object would be before he looked at Ronan like he freely trusted him with the world and nodded once, pleased. “That’s clever.”

“It shouldn’t have taken so long,” Gansey said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” The twist of his lips was melancholy at a first glance, and a pressed-down grin at a second. It said, _I expected nothing. This is more than I ever could have asked for._

_Ask for more!_ Ronan wanted to shout. 

“I will bid the Vancouver crew _adieu,”_ Henry assented at the end of it, as they all began to shuffle to their feet. “And then we can have our own little party.”

They gathered on the deck, drinks in hand, but didn’t go any farther. By some silent understanding, some universal draw, they all looked up to the stars. How many countless balls of gas burned and burned off into an unfathomable distance, how many other spheres of rock and water spun round and round and fostered life? In another dimension, how many children of Cabeswater huddled on a deck, maybe not alive, but aware and together?

This was real magic. When Ronan could look at his family and breathe easy. 

Adam sidled closer. Noah’s arm brushed against his, solid and real. Blue breathlessly pointed out a constellation and Gansey didn’t answer, but he smiled so softly, and Henry made up his own arrangement of stars.

Ronan took one of those easy breaths, treasuring it. His thoughts spun in a thousand directions, possibilities unfolding before him, hope of a path where they could be as they once were.

No matter how any of it worked out, for the fact that he’d gotten something to fight for at all, he was lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I direct ya’ll to my new favorite CMV ever: https://youtu.be/nmFG_DpJCmU  
> The Hozier soundtrack tops off the perfection *chef’s kiss*


	3. and i've never felt more alone

Blue tucked her water bottle into her bag, taking one last look at the snacks for anything to take home. A woman in a Doctor Who costume was curled into a chair against the wall, but she was absorbed in her phone, eyebrows furrowed, and otherwise Blue and Gansey were alone again.

“Want--” she started, and cut herself off before, _anything?_ “--to say goodbye with me?”

Gansey slid the back door shut behind him, eyebrows raised. She let herself appreciate him for a moment, ever dashing in his pirate costume, straight-backed like it was bravado rather than proper posture. “To Jiang?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why not,” he said, rather formally. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her slip-up. They always made him quiet. Stilted.

Gansey looked at her expectantly. Blue said, “Right then,” and checked the room by the back door, an office. No dice. She peered into the game room and nearly called out to Jiang, who was sitting on the couch where she and Adam had earlier. Her gaze caught on Prokopenko at the last second. His side profile; beaky nose, gawky ears, faint bony form perched on the arm of another couch that had been dragged in front of the tv. Then, the back of Kavinsky’s head. Dyed platinum blond beside him, playing some stupid shooter game.

She abandoned the leftover snacks and drinks on the tables down there; Jiang wouldn’t mind with all the other mess already around, right? It was worth the impoliteness to evade them. Blue moved on into the living room. She weaved through the partygoers, clutching Gansey’s hand like an anchor in a storm as people brushed by her. She thought she recognized some of them. Old schoolmates, or from around town. 

“Excuse me,” she said to a man dressed like a lumberjack blocking her way to the foyer, and his conversation with a woman wearing a dramatic black cape and gown dropped. 

“I heard about you,” the woman said, looking at them both.

“Oh?” Gansey said neutrally. Blue glanced back for the others. Noah had gone off with Henry to say goodbye, and Ronan and Adam had chosen to loop around the house rather than go back through it. 

The woman grinned with plastic fangs. “The vamp and the witch. Cute.”

Gansey’s grip fluttered tighter. “We were on our way out.”

“Everyone says you handled a demon a couple years back,” the man picked up. “You didn’t call the Council to help?”

The woman leaned forward eagerly. “Who Turned you?” 

“Fuck off,” Blue shot back before she could even think about it. “What a--a disrespectful question.” She shoved past them, dragging Gansey down the stairs and right out the door. The thing in the tree was still watching, calm and unflinching.

Nobody in the magical world had known about Cabeswater, not more than rumors anyway. It made sense. Technically, it hadn’t manifested until Ronan had willed it into being. In a little town in Virginia where the reach of the magical community was thin, they handled everything on their own, from Whelk to the demon. Blue’s mother had instilled in her distrust of the witch Council, as she’d been exiled by them herself.

Though things had changed, the Council ultimately was not a powerful enough unit to do much about the collectors or spirits or anything. Or didn’t care to. They wouldn’t have helped much, as Blue had concluded since. She refused to regret those old choices they couldn’t change.

Blue realized how tightly she was squeezing Gansey’s hand and released it, slamming the door shut. “Jesus. A third grader has better manners.”

Gansey’s face was paler than usual. Carefully blank. “I doubt that’s true.”

“Depends on the third grader.”

“I get the feeling you were very precocious.”

She breathed in, breathed out. “I really thought we were better than this now. I shouldn’t have. I’m not, so why would anyone else be?”

Gansey tilted his head, lit yellow in the lamplight, hair tinged by it like licks of flame. “We’re doing alright.”

They stayed on the porch, feet planted on the concrete, steadier than the grass.

“I really mean it, you know. You need to get away from Monmouth more. Come on a trip with me or Henry. We can change shifts. You can help us with our work--you’d be great.”

Gansey’s smile hovered between rueful and placating. “ _I’m_ doing alright. Someone needs to keep watch.”

“I did say we can change shifts. All the tougher jobs I’ve taken--that time I had to walk three days through a jungle, or that haunted crypt I told you about--they’d all be so much better with you. We could make it an adventure.”

He paused. “You didn’t tell me about the jungle. What ever did you have to go so far for? Alone?”

“I had a guide for the first day or so, not the rest of it, and I must’ve gotten turned around ten times. You would’ve thought it was the coolest thing. Not the bugs though. They were awful. I had to get this hat with a net around it. Come with me next week, we can work it out with Henry.”

“He has work too, it can’t be so soon.”

Blue huffed. “We’ll make it a road trip like when we graduated high school. No need to book a ticket.”

“Ah, I’ll plan the sights for you to see. When’s your next one out of the country?”

“So you won’t go.”

“Henry--”

“Would you, if he said yes?”

What the fuck else was there to do other than _push?_

Gansey stared at the thing in the tree, then out at the yard. Blue wondered how long they had before Henry and Noah emerged and willed him to _just tell her what was wrong._ “Maybe next time.”

“What will it take to make you mean it?”

Gansey’s eyes flashed. Dangerous, for a moment. She brushed away his inhumanness on most days, but now she couldn’t stop seeing it. How still he was. How dead. Blue blinked hard, and Gansey turned stricken, the slight raise of his fangs below his lips disappearing. 

The space between them was full of unspoken, sharp-edged things, and which to pick up? She hadn’t noticed all the spikes and broken glass until now. This was just the tip of the iceberg, but Blue didn’t even know what was swirling in the depths below her. What were they really talking about?

“Don’t start pushing me away again,” Blue said impatiently, “not like after you Turned. I’m not going anywhere, and it achieves absolutely nothing.”

“I will always be the same.” Gansey’s voice was quiet, rushed. “No matter how many years pass, I’ll be eighteen. If anyone guards Ronan, it should be me--I’ll have more years than you, why waste your precious days?”

She hadn’t been able to rationalize it, so she’d glossed over all the odd moments, but now the pieces started clicking into place. “Ronan’s trapped in a still state too. He’ll be young for a long time, but you’re doing everything you can to help him anyway.”

“He’ll outlive you, and who will be left to protect him?”

“That’s decades off.”

“You and Henry need to have your lives.”

“We do! If Ronan is worth trying to give a life back to, then why aren’t you!”

Blue’s mouth snapped shut as the front door opened, Noah and Henry looking up the stairs and saying their last goodbyes as they edged outside. She looked furiously at Gansey, trying to slow her racing heart and temper her expression. Gansey composed himself just as Noah turned.

“Gansey,” Blue said.

He shook his head and set off across the yard. Blue forced everything down as her throat closed up, willing no tears to rise. It was the effort of appearing normal again that took the most out of her, more than even the-- _argument._ Was it? They hadn’t had one in so long.

“Look what I got,” Noah said, all cheer. He lifted a paper crown printed with cartoon ghosts and pumpkins and placed it on her head. “My queen.”

Blue smiled weakly, straightening it over her hair. Henry finally finished laughing with one of the crew and stepped onto the porch. Wanting peace more than she wanted an outlet, Blue hugged Noah, hiding her face in the sheet. He was colder than before. She made a conscious effort to mirror back the ley line’s power, recharging him.

“They miss you,” Henry began, and chattered away, taking the pressure off her. By the time Noah was lukewarm again, the magic had calmed her. She released Noah, seeing understanding in his eyes. Henry recounted the Vancouver crew’s stories from the past months as they made their way back to the car, arms slung around her and Noah’s shoulders.

Gansey was sitting in the back. Before Blue could ask, Noah maneuvered her into the front seat and climbed in after her, nearly weightless in her lap, head ducked to fit.

“Why are--” Henry began.

“Drive, Cheng,” Ronan said. “I’m sick of this place.”

  
  


The streets blurred by, Henry driving just enough over the speed limit to have Blue squawking at him. As soon as she’d gotten in the car, Gansey had given up the ‘I’m fine’ act and passed Ronan his phone to look through Maura and Declan’s updates from the night, staring out the window like a bad music video star. While Henry and Blue went back and forth over the appropriateness of stereotypical magical species costumes, Ronan and Adam huddled together and read.

Opal had asked to stay at Fox Way when they all woke up. _I see you all the time, Kerah,_ she’d said, together in the dreamscape version of the Barns. Where Gansey was Ronan’s keeper, Maura and Calla were Opal’s, and Declan was Matthew’s, somewhere in D.C.

**Declan Lynch.** _He’s safe._

6:03 p.m.

Always to the point. Ronan didn’t know how he kept Matthew safe and managed his job at the same time, but he trusted that Declan had cooked up some mix of traps, wards, and dangerous people. Ronan changed the name to _‘dicklan’_ and searched for Maura’s messages.

She always told Ronan about what the Fox Way women and Opal had done or a little moment. Opal’s new habit of eating the fruit from yogurt cups and abandoning the rest, her interest in witchcraft, her first successful tarot card reading with Calla. How she’d tied fallen twigs and twine to make a charmed doll without instruction, which Maura found impressive and Ronan disturbing. Tonight, there was only one text:

**Maura Sargent.** _i saw diinosar movie with bridget. Opal._

9:24 p.m.

“Dinosaur movie?” Adam said. “You gave her strange taste.”

“Maura said she’s watched ‘Peter Rabbit’ seven times.” He passed the phone to Adam to text back. “She’s trying to memorize it so she can make a dream copy.”

“Of course she is,” Adam said, like he meant, ‘you _would do that’,_ and raised his free hand, fingers ghosting over Ronan’s cheek. Where Blue had touched before, right over the scar. He considered it with a rueful smile and turned away, replying to Opal.

Ronan had been faring relatively well--keeping the night horrors away, finding ways to spend the endless time, raising Opal as well as he could--but every once in a while trouble found them. Playing tag with Matthew and Opal through the woods had drawn him too far from home, and he’d caught a glimpse of a tree that looked just like the one that had given him visions in Cabeswater. It only took a split-second for the creatures to stir from the dark corners of his mind. Screeching through the trees with a vengeance.

Ronan had swept Opal up in his arms and charged back through the woods with Matthew. They’d all made it back to the Barns, falling over the boundary line into safety, but it had not left them unscathed.

_We have to fix my dreaming,_ he thought suddenly. _I have to fix it for them._ They were more than extensions of himself. They could be people too, if he freed them long enough to be.

Blue clapped her hands, pulling Ronan’s attention as Henry parked before Monmouth. “Who wants snacks? I brought a whole box of them to prepare. Cookies?”

Gansey blankly stared at the back of her headrest. Ronan reached around Adam to smack him upside the head. Gansey startled, giving him a thoroughly offended look, and got out of the car with the others. As they often did, Ronan and Adam lingered just a bit behind. Slower to shut their doors and walk around, meeting on the strip of sidewalk.

“Well something went to shit,” Ronan said, watching Blue and Gansey go in opposite directions, toward Monmouth’s entrance and Blue’s car.

Adam sighed, tucking Gansey’s phone in his pocket. “I hate losing control.”

Ronan understood. “You’ll get it back now.”

“So will you.”

He knew what he had to do.

Henry and Blue’s voices carried, still bickering about the costumes, but a sharp undertone had taken root. _Not my problem,_ Ronan thought, letting them pass him in silence. They each held a large cardboard box, and Blue shouldered her way into the stairwell and went up in a huff. Henry stopped at the bottom, looking over the box at Ronan.

“Going to be a minute?” he asked neutrally.

Ronan jerked his chin toward the loading dock. “We’re taking a drive.”

Henry raised a brow, suspicious, knowing, but nodded and followed Blue up.

Ronan led the way, his fingers itching for the familiar feel of the BMW beneath them. Smooth leather, easy wheel, sliding into every gear shift with grace, the purr of the engine, Adam beside him. Racing down some empty street they’d traveled a thousand times.

“So what are we really doing?” Adam asked as they came around to the side of Monmouth.

Ronan yanked the overhead door up into the ceiling and stared into the shadowy first floor. “Gansey said something about a theory.” He searched the wall for the lightswitch. “That we’re being kept from having normal lives, aging so little, because Cabeswater’s trying to preserve us for the next big threat.”

The fluorescents flashed suddenly, burning a flare of light into his eyes even as he blinked. Most of the first floor was still dirty and abandoned, ancient machines crowded together, but this little square was lit and pristine. White light reflected off the sleek lines of the BMW. Ronan ran his hand over the hood, cool metal against his palm. Adam was rooted to the spot.

“They know that there’s going to be one?” Adam said, slow and measured.

“I don’t know. Maybe they saw the future. Maybe they’re just trying to be ready for anything.”

“It isn’t right.”

“You’re telling me.” Ronan opened a drawer in a cabinet set into the wall, rooting through spare tools to find his keys. “I think Cabeswater would let us go, if we asked.”

Adam moved, sitting on the hood, expression grim and calculating. “If we demanded. We can’t offer a choice. We went to Cabeswater for help so many times, in the beginning. It didn’t change anything.”

“We weren’t asking the right questions.”

“We didn’t give an ultimatum.”

The keys were familiar, edges digging into his skin _._ “If there’s something coming they know about, then what? How do we know what’s more important?”

“Us or them?” Adam met Ronan’s gaze, half-searching, half-set. “We don’t. Ask how many years until then. If it’s beyond our lifetime, we tell Cabeswater to find a new group of kids and mold them like they molded us. If it’s when we’re old, we say the same thing. If it’s soon, there’s no reason we can’t help while living normally. They can’t trap us for some indefinite threat that could be hundreds of years in the future.”

Ronan thought of Glendower. Thought of Gwenllian. Of _being_ Gwenllian, trapped in a tomb beneath the ground for hundreds of years. Young, angry, waiting. Everyone he’d ever known--the entire world he’d grown up in left behind. Going mad.

“I could give myself,” Ronan said, “but I won’t give Opal and Matthew.”

“They are you.”

“They could be more.”

Declan had fought him over it years ago, when Matthew started passing out in his classes. He’d carted him around to doctors, magical and not, but there was no solution. They’d refused to let anyone take a look inside. Declan had told him that he needed to fix it, that Ronan couldn’t drag Matthew down with him, but at some point, Ronan had given up. Lost his fire to solve it. It was his grave mistake, and he had to pay them back for it.

“We tell Cabeswater that they let us go, or we stop being their magicians,” Adam concluded. “And if there isn’t a threat, perhaps we make one.”

Ronan smirked. Adam didn’t quite return his expression, but it was close enough to mean, _I know. We thought the same thing._

“Ronan?” Blue called, stepping into the ring of light. A paper crown was tilted back on her head, a clash with the look in her eyes. Determined, but regretfully so. Her emotional battery seemed to be running down, but here she was anyway, because something needed to be done and she was nothing if not practical. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He shrugged, sitting beside Adam on the hood of the car. Their pinkies pressed together, a single point of contact and acknowledgement of what had been decided. “Sure.”

“Alone?”

“I have nothing to hide, if you’re fine with it.”

Blue sighed, then breathed deep, steeling herself. “I want to get Gansey out of Monmouth more. He’s been truly obsessed. I tried to tell him it’s doing him no good to be wrapped up in research all the time, but. . .”

“He looks at the same things, half the time,” Ronan said. “Goes over the same information over and over again like it’ll tell him something new. It’s not even good research.”

Blue bit her lip. “I need you to tell him to get out. Better you than Adam, but both of you works too.” Ronan arched a brow. “If you said you’d run away if he didn’t agree, he’d believe you to do something reckless. Not so much with Adam alone, but with both of you, he’d hate to disagree.”

“I’m not worried about my body,” Ronan said.

“I am,” Adam said. “You’re at Monmouth in the first place because you were nearly kidnapped.”

“What’s the plan, Sargent?”

She already had an idea, he could see it in the very way she held herself. “Do you trust my family to protect you? It wouldn’t be too much trouble, and you could stay in town.”

“They’d be in danger.”

“You haven’t found much for years,” Blue said. “I think we’d be just fine. Adam?”

“I trust them,” Adam said quietly. “Thank you.”

Ronan hoped such arrangements wouldn’t be necessary soon, but they were for now. They would be if they couldn’t fix this. “I’ll knock some sense into Gansey.”

A faint smile flickered across Blue’s face. “Good that. I’ll call my mother and see what she says. Get her a gift basket or something.”

Adam flipped something in his hands distractedly. Gansey’s phone. “Will do.”

Blue stepped back, just once, beginning a retreat then looking at them more closely. “Where are you going?”

“We wanted a moment,” Adam said.

“Ah.” Her expression mirrored everything Ronan felt, and he regretted--not _lying,_ not quite, but evading--lying by omission. “Don’t worry about us. We’re going to put up decorations--because it’s fun, Ro, before you say it.” Her gaze caught on the phone, but she didn’t ask for it. “Take as long as you need. ”

She left. Her joy had dimmed, leaving a sour taste in Ronan’s mouth, combined with the wrenching thought of how she’d react if she figured out what they were doing.

“ _Excelsior,”_ Adam said.

Ronan got in the car. Adam turned off the lights and sealed the dock door as Ronan drove down the ramp, feeling his pulse from his throat to his fingertips.

“Tamquam,” Ronan said, as Adam slid into the passenger seat.

Adam’s hand settled on his knee. “Alter idem.”

They drove to Cabeswater.

  
  


Blue watched the BMW pull away, pacing in front of Monmouth, phone pressed to her ear. She picked at her orange nail polish with her thumbnail, wishing she could be going on that drive, needing to go somewhere far away and _scream._ Just once. Then she could relax. The shout was building in her chest.

The phone rang and rang.

A quiet _click._

“Mom?” Blue said.

“Try again. What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

Blue chuckled. “It’s nothing current. Can you get her?”  
“ _MAURA,”_ Calla yelled. Blue heard a faint call back. “On her way. Are you going to grace us with your presence soon?”

“Day after tomorrow, I have to recover from the crash,” Blue said.

Calla seemed to understand ‘energy crash’, not ‘car crash’, for she only said, “We’re making pie. Apple. It’s been decided for you. But you may buy pumpkin pie ingredients and attempt to make another.”

“Hello, child-of-mine,” Maura said, before Blue could answer, and she heard the switch to speaker mode.

“How’s dad?”

“Well!” Mr. Gray said from the background. “How are you, Blue?”

“Just fine.” Blue opened her mouth again, thinking to go right for the point, but instead she asked, “What are you doing?”

“Setting up another movie for Opal,” Calla said. “The little can-eater’s not going to be falling asleep until at least three in the morning, so we’re going along for the ride.”

Maura directed the question back at Blue, and she faltered. “Oh. Setting up a little Halloween celebration of our own.” She knew the question was coming, _what’s wrong?_ “Could you just talk for a minute? Tell me what’s been happening?”

Maura paused. “Of course.”

Blue walked back around to the loading dock as her mother talked, commentary thrown in by the rotating figures around her, listening intently. She spoke of the awful Disney channel movies from years ago Opal was picking through, her excitable friend Bridgette who was now spinning around the kitchen, recent clients from the past few weeks. After a few minutes of this, Maura finally asked, “Honey, what is it?”

Blue sat on the strip of raised concrete beside the ramp, kicking her feet off the ledge. Secured by Fox Way’s chatter and hubbub, it was a simpler task to loose her tongue. “You know what’s been going on with Ronan and Adam, would it be possible to have them stay with you again? I know it might bring the wrong kind of attention, but--”

“Coma patients make wonderful house guests,” Calla said. “These we don’t even have to feed.”

It was so jarring and _Calla_ of her that Blue laughed. “I don’t know how long it’ll be for. We just need to give Gansey a little space. You do have to feed them, but only when they wake up. Make sure they eat as soon as possible after.”

“We know how it goes,” Mr. Gray said, closer than before. Blue imagined he was settling on the couch beside her mother. “I’ll ensure the safety of your friends.”

“Thank you.” She put as much heart into it as she could. “Mom?”

“We’ll have to sort out the room situation, but it won’t be an issue. You can bring them with you the next time we see you.” Her tone shifted into mother-knows-all. “What else?”

Maura was always, unfailingly and unflinchingly, there for Blue to lean on. And for her friends. Two distant mothers, two dead, and one who had laid her son to rest--Maura had stepped in as a mother for all of them, too.

“Things are maybe falling apart a tiny bit,” Blue admitted.

“What can we do?”

“Is your boyfriend the problem?” Calla said. “I’ll gut him for you.”

“They’ll never find the body,” Mr. Gray added. She believed him.

Despite herself, Blue smiled. “It’s okay. I think we’re on the way to better. Thank you. All of you.” She received a chorus of questions and ‘I love you’s. “I love you too,” she answered. “I’ll see you for that pie baking day.”

Her finger hovered over the _END_ button. The sounds of Fox Way continued, Opal calling over options of ‘ _Descendants or Zombies?’_ to laughter and votes, then Maura, saying again, “I love you, Blue.”

Blue whispered it back and hung up.

She pushed off from the ledge, landing too harshly on the balls of her feet and wincing. The night was captivating, the dark lot stretching out spotted by lampposts, the trees across the street a silhouette against the sky. Blue would spend every minute under the stars if she could. Especially on a night like this. The very air was charged, full of magic and possibility.

Back home, her mother would have drawn sweeping predictions for the year with Calla, taking every last advantage of the energy. Climbing the Monmouth stairs, Blue turned spells over in her head and put them aside for another life.

“What took you so long?” Henry called, voice echoing across the space as soon as she entered the second floor, bouncing slightly to warm herself up.

He knelt by the Henrietta model with Gansey. It had gotten destroyed twice, and he’d fixed it and built it back up both times, and now the entirety of Main Street and at least five buildings down each street branching off it had sprouted up. Fox Way, St. Agnes, the Barns, Monmouth, and Henry’s old place with the Vancouver crew were all set around the model, despite their lack of relevance.

“I was calling my mom,” Blue replied. If he asked about what, she’d tell him, but Gansey held up a cardboard rectangle half-covered in impressively identical, miniscule shingles and Henry laughed delightedly instead. Blue sat beside them for a minute, content to stew and settle and watch. Gansey showed them the process of painstakingly measuring and drawing rows of shingles, cutting thick paper with a scalpel, then arranging and gluing down the pieces.

She yawned, wrapping her arms around herself, searching for the content that had flitted in and out of her grasp throughout the night and pulling it over her like a blanket. The floor was cold, but Gansey’s smile was warm. She needed to see it after their not-fight, even if it was directed more at Henry than her.

“Where are Ronan and Adam?”

It took Blue a moment to realize Gansey was asking her.

“Oh,” she started, and Noah answered, “Cabeswater.”

So often when Noah disappeared, she didn’t even realize he was gone until he came back. This was one of those times. Blue focused her gaze, and he was standing in the center of Main Street like he’d been there the whole time, sheet discarded. She was glad to see his smudgy face and Aglionby sweater again.

“Wait, what,” Blue said, snapping further out of her thoughts.

Gansey looked up in alarm. “Why would they need to go there?”

“It’s hard to tell.” Noah tucked his bruise against his shoulder, rubbing his cheek like he could wipe it off. “Don’t look at me.”

Blue felt he meant it in that, ‘don’t look at _me’,_ it’s-not-my-fault Ronan Lynch sarcastic way. He said it so softly that instead she remembered every instance of him turning her face away from his bare skull on the days he couldn’t hide it and his energy had wilted.

“Here is the night’s trouble,” Henry said. “I have been waiting for it.”

They scrambled to their feet, shingle cutouts tumbling to the floor. Blue held out a hand to Gansey and he mindlessly let her tug him up, only to pull away a moment later.

Blue said, “Don’t jinx us further,” then, to Noah, gently, “Is this about their--” _what to even call it_ \-- “curses?”

Noah shrugged. Wearing the sheet had done more than hide him from strangers’ prying eyes--it hid him from _them._ He needn’t waste any effort on looking normal, so he could be more of himself than ever. 

“I shouldn’t have told Ronan about my theory,” Gansey said.

Henry countered immediately, “Not true. He deserved to know.”

Blue shook her head. “That’s what you think this is? They’re trying to ask Cabeswater. Now.”

“No time like the present,” Noah said, like it was a cruel joke, his mouth twisting humorlessly.

Blue only knew one thing for certain. “They’re not doing it without us.”

  
  


Ronan pushed the speed limit in town and raced down the empty streets on the long way to Cabeswater, like when he used to race Kavinsky. (Like when he had more anger and less peace, he reminded himself.) No matter what disappointments life brought, his car was never one of them. Neither was Adam.

Hand in hand, they’d walked into Cabeswater and felt the snap of the world suddenly coming into startling clarity, crossing the threshold to home. Their true home, beneath the other places they gave the title.

“What are we looking for?” Adam asked.

The BMW had long disappeared between the trees. Towering, silent, no _tir e e’lintes_ caring to make a sound. 

“I don’t know.” Every direction looked the same. Ronan just kept walking straight on. “The right spot. Anywhere. Nowhere.”

Fall leaves crunched beneath their feet and rustled on the wind around them. Ronan dared Cabeswater to speak, to greet them, but the trees said nothing. They walked on and on. He waited for that _aha!_ Moment. He waited some more.

Ronan was restless and tired and he wanted to _run._

So he did.

He pulled Adam forward, and together they darted through the trees, ducking massive boughs and leaping onto fallen trunks. They crossed over a stream on a trunk too wide for both of them to put their arms around, a hole in the center pitch black like it had been on its way to being unmade. Ronan needed more than running. He felt the phantom weight of ropes around him, trapped and senseless and _restless, restless._

_Give me rest, Cabeswater. It’s the absolute fucking least you could do. Leave me alone._

The trees opened up onto a clearing. He crashed across the shell-strewn shore and looked into the face of a lake they’d grown into adulthood with, spent hundreds of days and tens of camped nights at. Ronan released Adam’s hand and went right in. Cold water soaked through his shoes. He waded in to his knees--this was the place, he could feel it.

Adam came in after him. “You’re going to get sick.”

He nearly laughed. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

“It’s the easiest part to confront.”

Ronan drew in a breath, crisp air filling his lungs. He exchanged a look with Adam, understanding passing between them, and closed his eyes. “ _Cabeswater.”_ In Latin, he called upon them. In the few words of their dream language that he knew, he called upon them.

Seconds passed, minutes passed.

No answer.

Adam drew out the ghostlight. It floated up above them and Ronan thought, half-deliriously, that the tiny glowing orb made Adam an angler fish tempting prey.

Ronan called again. English. Latin. Dream language. The latter the kind that had always warranted a response even when there was none before, but still, Cabeswater did not answer. When he opened his eyes, Adam was staring into the light. Ronan caught his wrist as he reached for it, drawing it closer to him.

“Scrying now could knock you out, Parrish.”

Adam’s gaze was already far away. Hazy. “You wanted to try asking.” He tilted his head, not quite himself. “Changed your mind?”

Ronan kept hold of his wrist. “Don’t go too far.”

Adam looked back into the light. His body tensed, then went still.

Ronan didn’t know how long he stood there, waiting, watching, guarding, but as he began to worry over Adam’s safety, the wind began to pick up. Adam stayed locked in his trance. The trees murmured--not to them, but among themselves--words nearly indistinguishable from the brush of leaves, the sounds tumbling into new forms, turning over in Ronan’s head. Unclear. Uncertain.

“What do you want!” Ronan yelled. He grabbed Adam’s shoulder, shaking him gently. Adam didn’t stir. He shook him again, harder. “Parrish. Wake up. Come back to me. _Adam.”_

He snatched the ghostlight out of the air, and Adam startled awake. Cabeswater _howled._

“I know what you’re doing to us!” Ronan cried. “Tell me what you want! You can’t trap us forever, we are not yours.”

Adam pressed a hand to his own throat, breathing rapid and unsteady. A gale ripped through the clearing, and Adam turned into Ronan, nearly hyperventilating.

“Ultimatum,” Adam gasped. Ronan pulled him in close like he could protect him from Cabeswater’s apparent wrath. It felt like a hurricane would start any moment, a tornado coming to lift them off their feet and carry them away like goddamn Dorothy in _Wizard of Oz,_ magic and fury and a dead witch. Two very dead magicians.

“We aren’t your pawns,” Ronan said. No longer shouting, but he knew they could hear them. “We’ll be here to fight for you, but if you tie us down, we will break away and never come back. When the next threat comes, we won’t help you.”

Four figures burst into sight. Three of them stopped, shocked, but one kept running until they were splashing into the lake--Blue, hair whipping around her, not slowing until she’d nearly tackled them into the water.

Ronan let loose every sour feeling from the past six years. “We’ve done everything you wanted!”

A thousand eyes blinked out of the dark. Red, yellow, white. Ronan had never seen them in Cabeswater before and could only hope he hadn’t brought some horror on.

Adam said, “Please.” The wind died down. “You’re taking our lives.”

Thin stripes of light illuminated Blue’s glare from the orb clutched between Ronan’s fingers. “You better do your damn best to fix this,” Blue said, needing no explanation to bring up the fire that burned beneath her surface, her grip painfully tight on Ronan’s arm, “or we all walk.”

The eyes closed and didn’t open again. The world sank into eerie stillness, the undisturbed surface of the lake a perfect mirror reflecting the silent trees and beaming moon. On the shore, Ronan could just make out who was who of the shaken, shadowed figures. Henry surprised him, the one to wade in next.

“What the actual fuck,” Henry said, expression open and wild, “in all seven circles of hell were you thinking.” Adam shivered violently. He didn’t feel fully _alive_ yet, some part of him still drawn out by scrying. “Come on, you absolute _dumbasses,_ get to shore.”

“We would’ve helped you, goddammit,” Blue said. Her grip loosened, and she tugged Ronan. He walked Adam to the others slowly, never letting him go. Adam curled his fingers in Ronan’s shirt, not seeming to fully process what was happening.

Gansey stepped back as they approached. Ronan let the ghostlight go, but it made Gansey’s expression no more readable. Pursed lips, hard eyes. Fearful? Angry? He said nothing, and the disapproval he radiated was worse than anything else. 

“Adam?” Henry said gently. “Are you alright, man?”

Glances were exchanged around them, but Ronan just kept holding him, glaring into the forest. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Blue snapped.

“I walked through the dream Cabeswater. The one you carry--” he touched Ronan’s chest, over his heart-- “I felt their fear. This is what they wanted to do to Glendower. Keep him until the day he was needed. But it didn’t work. They’re afraid of being unmade again. They lost so many friends they--.”

He cut himself off. Whatever he’d gotten from them seemed raw emotion.

Ronan waited still for their oh-fearless-leader to speak, but Gansey only watched them, frown deepening.

“Where’s your head now,” Ronan said, brushing a hand through Adam’s hair. “Are you with us, or are you fading away?”

“I’m with you.”

“Is this because of the scrying or because of what they showed you?”

“What they showed him,” Noah answered.

Adam nodded.

Finally, Gansey said, “You think Cabeswater really did do this to you both, then.”

Ronan’s jaw tightened. “Yes, I fucking think this fucking proves it you asshole.”

“I was only asking.”

“Later, Gansey,” Blue said firmly, a slight edge of agitation to it. Adam was the number one concern now. Cabeswater’s non-answer would be left alone, Ronan didn’t know what else to do.

Ronan changed his mind--the Barns was home, the real version of it, or he would drill it into himself that that was the truth until he believed it instead of this useless fondness for Cabeswater. The beings that might turn on him the instant they saw fit.

They made their way back through the forest. He was conscious of what might be watching him, and he raised his chin, a challenge, _will you listen? Will you help? Will you let us build ourselves up after you took everything? Back when we were too young and full of wonderment to think it through._

The Pig was haphazardly parked, angled sharply in and nearly touching a tree. Everyone followed Ronan to the BMW instead, dazed. Ronan dug out his keys and tossed them to Henry, climbing into the back of the car and arranging Adam, who was still far away. He was unwilling to take the Camaro and risk it giving out on them when he needed to get Adam into dry clothes and warmth.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said. Ronan secured Adam’s seatbelt, his back to Gansey hovering at the open door. “For more than this. I’m sorry I gave you the sense that this was something you had to do on your own.”

“I needed to,” Ronan replied. Adam’s skin was ice cold. His head lolled against the window, gazing blankly out the window to where Noah pressed his fingers to the glass.

“You did not.” Blue leaned in by Gansey’s side as Ronan turned, her tone dripping motherly displeasure. “Maybe Cabeswater would have responded better if we’d all been there, did you think of that? We could’ve organized better demands from the start.”

Henry got in the front, craning around to see them; on the surface, more relaxed than the others, but his eyes betrayed a swirl of fear and resignation. “It always helps to have a plan.”

“We did,” Adam said. “It wasn’t like there was much to do but ask.”

Gansey’s mouth snapped shut. They all looked to Adam, but he only stared at Ronan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Gansey said again. “Are you--”

“Fine. Really.” He met Ronan’s eyes, a bit of steel returning. “I was just--when I tried to come back, I felt trapped. For a moment. Like I couldn’t, my body was shut off to me, and I was afraid it would be permanent. But I made it back. It’s okay.”

“You need to stop scaring me,” Ronan said.

A question wound between them, not yet voiced but never wavering. Gansey brought it down to earth: “Did it work?”

None of them knew.

By the time they got back, they’d have used up another two hours.

He needed Monmouth’s familiar yellow lights and slouching stacks of books. The pile of board games, shitty as they might be, and Blue’s box of snacks, the quilts in his room. He no longer felt restless. Now he wanted the rest of his night back, in case this wasn’t the end, and it was going to be another too-short year.

Ronan reached for the car door. “We’ll find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I set out to write this fic the idea was "as many Halloween fluff moments as possible with a ~dash~ of tension" like my Christmas fic but then it kept picking up more plot points and goings-ons and you know what,,, I'm not mad about it.


	4. it feels so scary, getting old

Ronan found Adam sitting in the dry bathtub, jacket off but otherwise clothed, a towel wrapped around his shoulders. Adam looked better, normal now, if not a little pale. Shivering and half-curled in on himself. His lips quirked at the sight of Ronan’s pyjamas.

“Not a word,” Ronan said, tossing a set at Adam. They were both ridiculous Halloween pyjamas gifted by Blue and Henry that Ronan intended on wearing completely seriously. Both had repeated patterns in stripes down them. Ronan’s black and white with dancing skeletons on his own, Adam’s with a brown background and cartoon pumpkins spilling ivy alternating with black cats.

Adam’s brow furrowed. “Your nose--”

Ronan swiped at it, feeling the prickle of blood just as Adam said it. Black smeared across the back of his hand. “Shit.”

He kicked at Adam’s feet, and he pulled them up so Ronan could step into the tub, sinking down across from him, legs pressed together in the cramped space. Adam passed him toilet paper for him to press to his face. Ronan tipped his head back, pinching his nose.

Adam nudged him, the pyjamas now balled into his chest like a pillow. “Don’t put your head up.” He reached out, but their bent legs blocked him from getting closer. Ronan dropped his forehead on his knees, and Adam’s fingers brushed the top of his head. “Have you been getting those often?”

“No. I think it was the Cabeswater trip that did it.”

“So maybe something did change.”

Ronan shrugged and made a noncommittal noise. Adam hummed and leaned in, his arms around Ronan’s shoulders, bent over his own knees. He was so damn cold.

He could faintly hear voices from the rest of Monmouth, floating through the cracked open door. The words were unclear, but the tones were friendly enough. Ronan didn’t regret going to Cabeswater, it was worth a try, but he didn’t know if it had worked and he also didn’t want to fret over it.

Ronan sat up, letting Adam throw out the bloody mess and press more toilet paper into his hands. Adam’s pant legs, just slightly damp but definitely chilled, pressed into Ronan’s ankles. He waited until the nosebleed seemed to be abating and raised himself onto the lip of the tub. “Change out before you freeze.”

A knock came on the door. It creaked slowly open, Blue looking in with pursed lips.

“We should get it out of the way,” Ronan said before she could start. Blue nodded, returning to the others. Ronan tossed out the toilet paper and washed his hands and face, the splash of cool like flipping a switch. Coming up fresh to stop thinking about his dreaming and start thinking about Gansey.

“Should I be there?” Adam asked, peering up at him.

“Nah. We’ve got it.”

Adam stood up, but Ronan shook his head. “Alright.”

Ronan stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him. Gansey and Henry were sitting on the floor with Noah getting ridiculous Halloween-themed centerpieces out of a box. Ronan marched over, took a sparkly wire spider out of Gansey’s hands, and said, “Adam and I want to move to Fox Way.”

Gansey’s expression was unchanging for a long moment, like he couldn’t wrap his head around it enough to even question it. Then he blinked at Ronan in shock. “What?”

“Just when we sleep. I’ll come back here when I wake up, but I want you to be free. They’ll always have someone watching the house, but you’re taking all the shifts here.”

“No, no,” Gansey said, “I’d rather you were close to me.”

“They have Opal. I can watch her better myself if we’re in the same place.”

Gansey started on another protest, but Blue knelt beside him on the floor and cut him off, “This is an intervention, Gans--sorry you weren’t informed, Noah--but we all love you very much, and if we’re working on solutions to our issues, then you have to let us help you too.”

“Yeah, and I can finally take you on cool trips,” Henry said.

“You can take me to all the people I haven’t been able to afford helping,” Blue seconded.

Gansey got to his feet, stepping back from them, all eyes on him. “I--this is what I’m meant to do.”

“They already agreed,” Ronan said firmly. “You won’t be happy like this.” He wouldn’t repeat it another thousand times. Gansey knew. He had to accept it.

Gansey backed up further, past Ronan. “I need to think.”

At least he wasn’t freaking out much. The need to escape was written all over his face, as much as he tried to school his expression. Noah followed him, shepherding Gansey into his old room. They watched in silence as the door shut.

“This is a good thing,” Blue said, like she was trying to convince herself.

Henry clasped her shoulder. Ronan said, “Don’t forget it.”

The sharp point in Blue’s throat had ebbed. Her thoughts kept wandering to Gansey--whether he was talking to Noah, or sitting in blank silence staring at nothing like she’d seen before, or--but she could work up a smile again. She could breathe.

“Waitomo Glowworm Caves,” Henry said suddenly as she moved around the kitchen, pulling out parchment paper and baking sheets. “They look like the caves I visited this year, without the chance of being drowned by mermaids. Far safer. We should go.”

“Where’s that?” Blue cleared a spot on the counter. “Could you find the chocolate chips?”

“New Zealand. Fine country.”

Henry hunted for them in the pantry, which had been built jutting out from the wall in a block. Blue remembered planning a backpacking trip with him years ago that they never went on, then remembered the odd mission she hadn’t asked him about yet. “Hey, Hen--” Ronan hopped up on the counter, and she was distracted by ordering him off of it.

Adam rejoined them, wrapped in a blanket like a fluffy cloak. “What did I miss?”

Blue gestured to Noah’s room. “We talked to Gansey. He’s thinking it over.”

Adam nodded solemnly, leaning against the counter with Ronan and fiddling with the supplies laid out. Blue tossed him a dampened towel to wipe down another spot on the counter and tried to get bowls out from a bottom cabinet without sending the precarious stacks crashing down. Henry emerged with the chocolate chips.

“I’d love to go,” Blue told him. “Maybe we can take Gansey too. That’d be a nice first adventure for him.” She finally got a trio of bowls to safety and handed them to Henry. “Hey, I wanted to ask you about something. The warding job you got me a couple months ago, for a Seeder and Bai? Do you know anything about them?”

Henry stilled for a split-second. She could recognize his reactions by now, and the smile he picked up was clear evasion as he set down the bowls and scanned the instructions on the cookie packets she’d brought. “I believe I know who you’re talking about. They are. . .collectors. It was an art gallery, no? See anything you liked?” He held out a package. “Should we preheat the oven now?”

“Too early. We’ll shape everything first--oh where are the cookie cutters.” She rooted through cabinets. “And yes, the gallery was beautiful. It was mythology themed, there was even a painting of _tir e e’lintes._ But the people I worked with were odd, I couldn’t find them on the staff list after either.”

“Maybe they were temporary hires. Galleries sometimes cycle through freelance organizers.”

Blue shrugged. “I don’t know how they work. But when I spoke to Jiang tonight, he seemed to think I’m working with whoever’s left of your mother’s associates, and I thought of those people at the gallery. They didn’t seem to know the things they should about the show. And they had--I don’t know how to explain it, just a manner that felt off.”

“Hold the fuck up,” Ronan said. He’d been calmly eating chocolate chips with Adam, but now he rounded slowly on Henry with a dark look. “You got her involved?”

“It was a simple warding job.”

“What exactly is going on?” Adam said.

Henry frowned, suddenly grim. “Blue, did they ask you about anything? Or did they allow you to do your job and go.”

“My skills,” Blue said.

“And what did you tell them?”

“Oh, _now_ you’re concerned,” Ronan snapped.

“It was a one and done job, I did not think it would be an issue!”

Their volume rose collectively as they overlapped, only Adam staying out of it. Blue said, “Are they _collectors._ The kind that tried to kill Ronan, kill all of us--”

“NO! I mean, they did not attempt to--”

“You really thought it would be simple,” Ronan said. “You know who they are and what they do--”

“Don’t yell,” Noah said quietly. Blue’s mouth snapped shut around another question. They fell into silence. Noah stood on the other side of the counter, head ducked.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said, voice cracking.

“Did you know or not?” Blue said steadily.

Henry looked wrecked, running a hand through his hair harshly, eyes shining with fear and regret. “I’m sorry. Seeder and Bai were close to my mother. They insisted on me sending someone to ward the gallery, and they said it was for that purpose only, and they would not follow up with you. They have not contacted you since, have they?”

Blue sighed. “No. True to word, so far.”

“I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have. Tell me next time. Are you in trouble?”

“I’ll explain it all to you tomorrow.”

She could accept that for now. “We’ll deal with them if anything comes of it.” Blue looked at Noah, guilt twisting in her gut at having got aggressive on what was greatly his night. Ronan and Henry exchanged glances with her, seeming to carry the same sentiment.

“I’ll help,” Noah murmured.

“Right,” Blue said. “Right, okay. Find the pretzels?”

He nodded, going to drag the box to them. Blue reached for Henry, not aiming for anything and ending with a fistful of his jersey.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Blue’s mind churned with the implications. That the collectors had been contacting him, possibly threatening him. And that was months ago. All night he’d been bouncing around high-energy, an easy redirection, but for how long before that had he been handling things without telling them?

She heard a door open, and went back to their task, cutting open a bag of mix to pour into one of the bowls. Ronan returned to stealing chocolate chips. Henry and Adam set about pouring out the other bags. None of them watched Gansey as he padded across Monmouth and sat at the counter, all a tad excessively focused.

Blue hoped he wouldn’t fight them over it. The plans were set.

A flash of color bounced off Blue’s shoulder. “Hey,” she said. Gansey’s expression remained neutral as he threw another M&M at her. Blue sidestepped it. “Watch it, those are for the pretzels.” The next one she caught in her mouth.

Gansey nearly smiled. “Cookie time?”

He came around the counter to help. Gansey liked cooking and baking with her, even if he couldn’t eat more than a bite or two of it, and Blue enjoyed doing anything with him. The well-worn scene of working in the kitchen together eased the ball of hurt in her heart.

“Cookie time,” Blue agreed.

  
  


The moment they’d finished arranging everything and shoving the first trays into the oven, Henry had declared a pumpkin carving competition. In his trunk were a dozen pumpkins of varying sizes, some larger than Ronan’s torso, that they’d carried up the stairs and claimed, piling the extras against a wall.

Now the floor in a six foot radius was a mess of pumpkin guts and pieces, knives haphazardly scattered between where each of them sat in their own little plot of mess. Ronan could smell the baking cookies even from yards away, and high spirits had returned with force. A counter to the low point they’d hit. Intentional, at first, overenthusiastic, but now Ronan could sprawl out truly casually and let teasing words slip off his tongue without effort.

“Noah,” Ronan said, looking at one of Blue’s centerpieces now propped up around them, a cartoonish sparkly ghost smiling shyly at them. “Is that you?”

The ghost in question sat across from Ronan paused his methodical pumpkin stabbing to look over. Noah giggled, pointing to a shimmery black kitten. “Is that _you?”_

Ronan mock-glared. Adam grinned beside him, a small smear of pumpkin insides on his cheek from warring with Ronan when they’d first begun the competition. The blanket was draped around his and Ronan’s shoulders, knee pressed to his. Close but angled away just enough to hide their carvings. Adam’s pyjamas kept making him smile whenever he forgot about them and looked again. They were just oversized enough that they fell low over his ankles and wrists.

Henry and Blue were bunched in a trio with Gansey a few feet away, debating what to do with the pulp as they hacked and sawed their pumpkins. _Fuel for the garden_ vs. _what garden, Henry, the correct answer is pumpkin bread._ Gansey contributed a list of other uses.

Adam eyed Noah’s pumpkin. “What’s your design?” 

Noah turned it around. A smiley face made of dashed marks, with overly detailed eyes and brows to it’s simple grin, creating a disconcerting effect. Ronan laughed and hid his pumpkin when Noah demanded to see his design in return. 

“It’s a surprise,” Ronan said.

Adam narrowed his eyes. “What, I can’t even see it?”

“Nope.”

Blue and Henry switched to talking about their year as if they hadn’t just been laying into each other five seconds ago over Henry’s made-up information on pulp encouraging Cabeswater’s plant growth. Ronan passed Adam a different knife, their fingers brushing.

“What did you do this year?” Adam asked him, a faint smile tucked into his dimpled cheek.

Ronan shrugged, carefully sawing through a section of his pumpkin. “Dreamscape’s not so bad. Matthew’s making me teach him the bagpipes. Both of us are trying to give Opal school, but we barely know how to fucking read.”

Adam snorted. “I’ll teach her.” 

_If the mind bridge works. If Cabeswater doesn’t._

“I was asleep for three months this year,” Ronan admitted. “It’s a new record.”

Adam’s eyes shot to his, absorbing it. “I’ll get you a ribbon,” he said in his measured way. “Noah?”

“Wandered a lot.” Noah switched to a knife that looked more like a screwdriver and stabbed twice, hard, looking satisfied. “Made friends. Went to the movies. Saw the sights. A Broadway show or two.”

“I tried to find you.”

“I know.” Adam frowned. Noah stared intently at his pumpkin. “I know now, when I’m back to the land of the living. I’m not really aware of it then. I didn’t even remember you until Blue summoned me. It’s not bad. I just don’t really feel or think anything, and I go up and down the ley lines. I get this itch to go far away.”

“Away from your bones,” Adam supplied. “Your subconscious thinks if you make the link thin enough, you can be free, but it never works.”

“That’s cheerful,” Ronan said.

Noah shrugged, clearly uninterested in talking about it more. Adam said, “I started teaching classes at Harvard.”

Ronan chuckled. “Ghost Harvard? What do you do with your degrees? Do you teach skeletons?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” Noah seemed content with the attention off him and talk of their odd dimension, so Adam continued, “Most people live out some sort of life in the spirit world, if they died younger. They don’t start wandering and fading until they’ve been around for a while. There’s a whole community at Harvard, and well--I’m one of the Folklore and Mythology professors.”

Something about it made Ronan’s chest pleasantly tight. The thought of Adam in a stereotypical professor’s outfit, a sweater and round glasses, elbow patch tweed blazers, was endearing. And then the fact that the course actually had the chance to be _fun_ , not pre-law or business or whatever the fuck they even had or needed in ghost land. (He doubted they needed lawyers. . .right?)

It hit Ronan how long a year really was. The next time they woke up together, he’d make Adam talk. Just talk. On and on about everything that had happened, because Ronan wanted to know every last detail and he hated that he couldn’t.

“What if I found you earlier?” Adam asked, Ronan’s response too slow.

Noah shrugged, drawn tighter into himself by the end of the movement. “It’s no use. I’m one of _those_ spirits. I’ll just wander away again.”

“I’d like to try.”

A narrow piece of the pumpkin shell snapped in Ronan’s hands. “Shit.”

Noah looked to him immediately instead of Adam. “What was that?”

Ronan glanced at Adam. Adam lifted one shoulder minutely, an _oh well._ “I broke an arm off.”

“An arm?” Noah questioned, as Adam said, “You’re making a meme, aren’t you.”

The timer went off. Henry scooped up his phone to shut it off, fumbling with his slick fingers, turning off the timer the moment before it slipped and made a cracking sound against the concrete. He stared at it for a beat in utter bewilderment.

“Oh,” Henry said.

Blue burst into laughter. “Is it broken?”

“Just a little crack,” Henry said, gently flipping it over. “Well. One minute warning.”

Adam shook his head fondly. There was no conversation but the desperate shout for tools through the last minute as they all rushed to finish their carvings. Ronan scraped some of the shell thin for depth and feigned indifference.

Henry counted down from ten, finished with his. Ronan calmly stuck the now two broken pieces back in, arranging them to hold, and laid down his tools with a smirk as Blue panicked over her remaining moves.

“Time’s up!” Henry said, gleefully taking the screwdriver tool from her. 

Noah leaned eagerly toward Ronan, his pumpkin cradled close on his lap like a child. “Can I see it now?” 

“No!” Blue cut in. “We have to have a grand reveal.”

“And then I’ll judge,” said Henry.

“Nuh-uh, nice try. We’re sticking votes in a hat.” She stretched out on her back to pick Gansey’s hat off the floor without getting up. “Here. Candles, paper, and pencils, everyone.”

She kicked a plastic container of supplies into the middle of their circle and they all collected their items. Ronan flicked on his electric candle. It lit up orange in his hands. He pinched his fingers around the plastic flame to see it glow through his thumbnail on the other side.

Henry jumped up to turn out the lights, springy as a deer. They were plunged into darkness. Ronan reluctantly shuffled back away from Adam on Blue’s orders to even their spacing, and stuck the candle inside his pumpkin. It was a winner.

There was a bang in the dark, and a stream of curses from Henry as he rushed back. “Sargent, your energy potion is making me buzz out of my skin.”

“I think that’s just you, Hen.”

Henry plopped back into his spot, rubbing his hands together. “Is everyone ready?”

“On three,” Blue said. “One, two. . .”

They turned their pumpkins around. Adam took one look at Ronan’s and rocked onto his back, laughing. “I knew it.”

  
  


“What the hell is that,” Blue said.

Ronan grinned. “I could ask you the same thing.”

She gestured at her pumpkin. “It’s Van Gogh’s, The Starry Night!” 

“It looks like you stabbed it blindfolded.”

Blue squawked in protest. To varying levels of success, they’d all done different designs. A classic toothy face on Gansey’s, a comically confused one on Adam’s that seemed to be an emoji, and an elaborate arrangement of what appeared to be a faux-satanic ritual on Henry’s.

“I like yours the best." Adam sat up and shuffled closer to Ronan. “But how on earth did you manage to do so many details in time.”

“What can I say. I’m magic.”

Adam rolled his eyes. Ronan wiped the remaining bit of pulp off his cheek with the back of his sleeve. Adam’s determinedly serious expression melted.

They scribbled votes out on scraps of paper and tossed them in as Blue shook the hat. She dumped the papers back out and squinted at them in the dim light from her candle. She read out, “Henry, Ronan, Noah, Ronan, Ronan, and--god dammit, Lynch.”

Ronan crowed his victory.

“Do you have dreamthing tools?” she asked him in disbelief, looking at the too-well-cut flames. But catching sight of the tiny face made her laugh again. 

“How do you cheat at pumpkin carving,” Adam said.

“Well, that’s what I’m asking him.” Blue looked at Gansey with a smile, but he was brushing back his hair, gaze faraway, pumpkin abandoned at his feet. She could always tell when he needed to feed. His energy drained easily, attention going in and out. “Honey, come help me check the cookies.”

Blue pushed Gansey ahead of her to the kitchen, trusting his night vision over the blurry, dark shapes in her own sight. He went without comment. She flickered the oven light, read the timer, and looked at Gansey pointedly. “When was the last time you ate?”

She couldn’t make out his expression, but his tone was even. “A week and a half ago.”

“ _Gans,_ isn’t that getting a little long.”

“I’m alright.”

Blue sighed, exasperated, and went into the pantry where a mini fridge was tucked under a low shelf. She retrieved a blood bag for him, checking the expiration date.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his wrist. They maneuvered carefully to the bathroom while Henry and Adam chattered about something to do with Harvard and Noah marched around with Ronan’s pumpkin. She turned on the bathroom lights, and in the second that it blinded her, Gansey took the bag from her.

Blue shut the door as he sat on the lip of the tub. He didn’t move to drink; he never did in front of her. “You never told me what you did this year.”

“Not much,” Gansey said quietly. “You were a bright spot in it.”

Blue debated sitting next to him, and decided he needed more space, sitting up on the counter instead. She wished that so much hadn’t changed. “Why didn’t you want to talk to the neighbors earlier?”

Gansey paused the way he did when he was weighing how to phrase the truth. “I don’t like what I am. People will start noticing by now. There are enough rumors to expose me regardless of whether or not they can tell by looking.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Blue said.

He smiled self-deprecatingly and held up the bag of blood, deep red. “Piper was a monster, and now I am too.”

“Piper was a monster because she tried to kill us. Because she did kill people, and afterward she could laugh. It has nothing to do with being a vampire.”

Gansey arched a brow, looking particularly Ronan-like. Cold and challenging. She ached for the hurt she knew he was carrying. “I need the blood of living creatures to survive, that is inherently wrong.”

Blue rolled her eyes, refusing to sink into some sad response. “There’s something called a food chain and the circle of life. You don’t even kill anything, you’re better than the meat-eater next door.” She snapped her fingers into a point. “Vampires have the lowest carbon footprints. You’ll never so much as be a consumer in the food system criminally underpaying workers for labor.”

“ _I crave blood.”_

“The ethical living that many in America cannot afford,” Blue countered matter-of-factly, “as long as you don’t follow through on that urge for people.”

Gansey laughed. Short, choked, but better than pure upset. “One person doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s the corporations.”

“You’re trying to tell me that _you,_ Richard Campbell Gansey III, sweetheart of the ages, are immoral. You, as an individual. So I will argue back to you on an individual level.” Blue tilted her head, waiting, but Gansey just looked at her, lost for words. “I love you.”

“Maybe you deserve better.”

“You’re an idiot, and I won’t accept this tomfoolery.”

Gansey turned the bag in his hands and shook his head. “Thank you.”

Blue slid off the counter. She wished she could drill the truth into his head, spell him out of self-doubt, but this was one of many battles and she’d done her best. Gansey didn’t look miserable, and that was enough for now.

“Come back whenever you’re ready,” Blue said. She ducked in to kiss his cheek, and he turned to catch her lips. “Okay?”

Gansey’s eyes crinkled. “You should publish your vampire arguments. I’m sure people would find them interesting.”

“ _Interesting_ is one way to put it.”

Blue pecked his lips, fingers brushing his jaw, and left. She jumped at the sight of Noah right outside the door, chuckling at herself as she closed the door softly. The lights were back on, and the others were in the kitchen with the first batch of cookies.

“They’re raiding the snacks,” Noah informed her gravely. He ruffled her hair.

“Without me?” Blue said. She felt a swell of bittersweet emotion, wishing he could stay for longer, feeling the time ticking down. Still thinking of Gansey and wondering how long the road would be to make him truly happy again.

“You can hug me again if you want,” Noah said knowingly.

Blue did. “Do you need more energy?”

Noah’s arms wrapped around her back as she slung her arms around him, her cheek to his shoulder. “I can do without it.”

“And I can take more energy potion.” But neither of them needed to make much of a conscious choice for him to gradually pull her power. Blue held on to him anyway. “I don’t mean to be so emotional. It just breaks my heart every time we do this.”

“So don’t.”

She scoffed. “What does that mean?”

Noah shrugged. “You should move on.”

“Let you drift off into the ether?” Blue pulled back, gripping his shoulders. “No way.”

“Adam’s soul got tied to the spirit world because he wanted to get me back so bad, but there was never any way to in the first place. I’ve been dead for fourteen years. It’s too late.”

“We know that. We’re not trying a resurrection.”

Noah said earnestly, his face clear, “You’re already closing ranks without me--”

“That’s not true--”

“I want you to. One day, you’ll summon me and I won’t remember anything. It’s easier this way.”

“We can stop that from happening,” Blue said.

“Spirits decay. That’s just how it works.”

She didn’t like how simple he made it sound, how he said everything like it wasn’t cutting her to the bone. “Do you want to go?”

“No.”

Blue shook him. “Then why?”

“I want to stay as long as I can, but--”

“Then stay.”

Maybe she could’ve let him go easier if this had been years ago. When Gansey had died and come back, when Cabeswater and surged and pitched in to make sure he survived without a sire. When a combination of their sacrifices had kept Noah as a ghost and Gansey in a half-life. A redistribution of power.

Maybe then she could have accepted that Noah had been decaying all year, whittled away bit by bit. She would’ve been able to say to herself that he was suffering, that laying him to rest was for the best.

Maybe then. But not now. She’d clung to whatever she could get of Noah for six years--and maybe, maybe she should listen. Maybe it was easier to let him go, and she should listen, but it wasn’t right. Not when they didn’t have to.

“You said it yourself,” Noah said. “It breaks your heart.”

“The heartbreak is over having such a good thing, all of us together, and having to say goodbye to it. Having that good thing is so worth it.” She curled her fingers into his sweater, voice firm and unrelenting. “And don’t you ever blame yourself for what happened to Adam.”

Noah put his head down, but it only made them level with each other. “You’re good at this. Who’s looking after you?”

“I’m playing catch-up from all those years being looked after,” Blue said, “but I still have my mom, when it matters. I spent the majority of my life with a prophecy hanging over my head; the trouble was mine. Now it’s everyone else’s turn.” An echo of a smile crossed Noah’s face. “You keep making me want to hug you.”

“You only get one night a year for it.”

Blue hugged him fiercely this time, squeezing him as tight as she could. Noah sighed happily. “We all love you very much, Noah. We’re happy to get together every year, and we’ll keep doing so until the day we summon you and you don’t know our faces.”

“You’re thinking about it the wrong way,” Noah said. “I’m not missing three hundred and sixty four days a year, and here for one. I’m just gone. I should never be here, but once in a while, you get a lucky return.”

Blue thought of the Day of the Dead. Thousands of summonings across Mexico calling lost family members home. She’d have to think of it a different way, rewire her brain, or else she’d keep grieving.

When she pulled back, Noah straightened the paper crown. Blue tugged him down to kiss his forehead. “I should have listened to you earlier.”

“It didn’t come up.”

“Because I never asked you what you wanted.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Noah said.

Blue stopped the words in her mouth.

“The cookies are great!” Henry called. She couldn’t tell if it was a move to lighten her and Noah up, but she took it as a sign to migrate back to the group.

“If I eat a ghost cookie,” Noah said, “is it a bid at cannibalism?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starring my own award-winning pumpkin from 2019. I am outraged that my piece, elegantly titled "ELMOWO" only took second place.


	5. how you wish it would be all the time

“I might not know how witch Council investigations work,” Adam said sagely, “but I know that they do not employ a magical _sock.”_

“Adam Parrish, magician,” Henry gasped, “judging their beliefs? I witnessed it in action myself, it is quite an intelligent sock. You remember the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter? Well, it’s sort of like--”

Noah was already curling over himself in the corner where the counters met, wheezing with laughter. Ronan grinned at Henry’s mock-adamant look.

“Could be a worse object,” Ronan said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Could be a sock with a different purpose. I might know one or two.”

Blue’s laughter rang clear as a bell. “You did _not.”_

“Better wash it before the Council gets to it,” Henry said.

Ronan grinned around a mouthful of sugar cookie as Adam met his eyes, looking content and soft in his pyjamas, hair messy and fluffy. Ronan leaned against the back cabinets, steadily working through a pile of cookies and pretzel-hershey kiss-M&M combinations, Adam stealing the pretzels off his plate, elbow brushing Ronan’s side.

Whatever weird moment had occurred between Blue and Gansey, then Blue and Noah, the latter pair were back now, cheery as ever. They were getting good at rolling with the punches. Blue had immediately smacked their hands away from a tray of sugar cookies on her return, and was now snipping the corner off a plastic bag she’d filled with icing. Her coat was off, puffy shirt sleeves pushed past her elbows, hair tied up. Ready for a baking battle.

“What’s the point in decorating if we’re going to eat them ten minutes later?” Ronan questioned, watching her intently squeeze out orange-dyed icing. 

“Well, maybe you won’t all wolf them down because you have four other trays of cookies,” Blue said. She delicately arced the icing so it didn’t reach the edge of the cookie.

Adam said, “You’re assuming they’re all still going to be here by the time you’re done.”

Blue glared without heat. Ronan bit into another cookie, enjoying the sweet and chocolate melting over his tongue. Henry locked eyes with him for a moment before his gaze skittered away.

“Where should we put our pumpkins?” Henry asked. “I would say out where the world can admire them, but no one can see them from the road.”

“Our winner should be in a place of honor,” Blue said.

Noah gestured to the counter, then pointed to the center. “Right here. Ronan’s in the middle.”

Henry seemed to realize that this wasn’t the topic to choose to avoid talking directly to Ronan. His weirdness must have been going on for longer, but Ronan hadn’t noticed. Ronan finished the rest of his cookie and shoved one last pretzel in his mouth before pushing the plate at Adam.

“Chainsaw’s gonna be coming back by now,” Ronan said, brushing by Henry on the way out of the kitchen. He’d thought about what Henry had said back at the party. He’d thought about what they’d argued over in the kitchen after that. He’d thought about Noah saying, _“Don’t yell,”_ and how it had shot through his veins, icy and revealing, and slowly turned him to a new conclusion.

Distrust of Henry was useless. Baseless. They were far past those days.

Ronan walked into the stairwell and opened another door to the left, stepping back out into the night air, where everything was still and quiet and cool. A small balcony of twisting black metal had been installed years ago, and there were plastic chairs crammed against the side of Monmouth, a tiny table covered in coffee rings between it. Ronan propped his arms on the railing and looked out. It only took a minute for Henry to join him. 

“I want to help you get out of this,” Ronan said. “But I can’t. All I know is that once you start playing their game, they won’t let you go.”

Henry sighed, hands gripping the railing, rocking his weight back and forth. “I realize that making myself valuable to them is a very bad idea, but I can’t help it. I am a very valuable person.” Ronan just looked at him, unamused. “They have already been intending on bringing me in since I was a child. My mother was the way in, at first. Now there are some who want revenge on her, and so think they can take it out on me. Others who feel she was fearsome and I will not be, but I can bring them the same artifacts she could.”

“Don’t let them take advantage of you.”

“ _If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em_ ,” Henry said, in a perfect mimicry of Ronan’s accent.

“Last time I said that was during a pillow war. Doesn’t count.”

Henry huffed and fell silent. Ronan was not Adam or Blue or Gansey, he wasn’t as good with words, and he wasn’t good at fixing people’s problems when force had no part in it. So he said what he could, “I trust you with whatever I dream. Even if we don’t need something that gathers energy, it’s a good back-up to make sure Opal and Matthew are okay, but I need to know that you’re going to tell Blue and Gansey everything. They’ll help you sort it out.”

“I will. The cat is already half out of the bag--is that how you use that expression?”

Ronan knocked their shoulders together. “This game killed my father and your mother, and it’ll kill us too.”

“Unless we can make ourselves the most dangerous pieces on the board.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Ronan said. “You don’t. You’re too good for that.”

_Kerah!_

A cry from the night, the dark sky and a darker shape zooming toward them. Ronan lifted his arm, and Chainsaw landed on it, wings flared, then turned around and around like his arm was a branch and not flesh she was giving a dozen new nicks and scratches to.

“Hey,” Ronan said, cursing when she hopped up his arm, claws sinking in. Finally, she flitted up onto his shoulder and preened. 

Henry snorted. “You look like a supervillain.” He smiled ruefully. “I should show up to the collectors’ auction with a creature of my own.”

“You swear to me you’ll tell Gansey and Blue.”

“I promise.” He flipped something in his hands. It glinted silver in the moonlight. RoboBee. Unmoving, singe marks on its metal carcass, but in one piece. His face twisted with guilt, a peek at what Ronan knew ran much deeper. “It was a mistake to keep it from them. I know that now. I shouldn’t have risked Blue catching their interest either.”

“At least we know she can handle herself, but she’d do better with a little heads up,” Ronan said. “You give me the list of whatever you need me to dream, just in case. I know you’ll make the right decisions together. Do whatever you have to.” 

“Thank you,” Henry said. He ran his thumb over RoboBee. Ronan wondered what it meant to him; a representation of his past? His mother? A reminder of how dangerous the world could be? Or was it something wondrous, a token of positive magic. “What would I be if I didn’t have all of you?”

“Out of business.”

Henry laughed, short and sudden. He reached out to pet Chainsaw and didn’t flinch when she pecked his fingers, stroking the back of her head.

Sometimes, Ronan thought he must be lonely.

Always on the move, facing threats by himself, only coming home to friends in Henrietta when he could afford to. Ronan thought that he must be--well, Henry had always been more sociable than him. Better with people, more likeable. He must have other friends, because how would Ronan make it if he couldn’t see at least one person he cared about regularly.

Henry said he didn’t mind. He loved them, and he was ace aro, he wasn’t going to go out and settle down with someone, he wasn’t ever going to settle at all, but Ronan thought: _this is what happens when we aren’t there to fight with him. He starts thinking--_ knowing-- _that he doesn’t have enough people at his back to stand against the crushing tide._

“Ro? Henry?” They both looked over as Adam appeared, holding up CD cases. There was little sign of what had transpired, but Adam’s expression turned knowing. “ _Coraline_ or _Corpse Bride?_ ”

“Coraline,” Ronan answered, while Henry said the opposite.

Henry took the cases, waving them at Ronan like another _thank you,_ and went inside. Adam joined Ronan at the rail, a breath apart.

“This is when we talk about it,” Ronan said.

Adam sighed and shifted closer, leaning his head on Ronan’s shoulder. “If they know, they’ll try and stop me.”

“Maybe you won’t need to at all.”

“It’s more than a back-up plan, it would be useful to be able to get in and out of your head whenever I need to. What if I could always be there? No matter the circumstances. I could help you.”

Ronan leaned his head on top of Adam’s. “My dreams aren’t safe.”

“They’d be safer with a magician beside you.”

“There’d be twice the risk of someone getting hurt,” Ronan said. “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger when you don’t need to.”

“But you don’t get a choice in it. At least I do. I’m choosing to try.”

Ronan took Adam’s hand off the rail and kissed his knuckles, curling their hands at his chest. Adam’s fingers were cold and callused. Feather-light when he brushed them up Ronan’s throat to his jaw, dancing over his lips.

“How can I say goodbye to you again?” Adam breathed.

Chainsaw lifted off Ronan’s shoulder, alighting on the rail between them, fluffing her wings. Adam absentmindedly petted her, and Chainsaw leaned into his hand as Ronan leaned into the palm on his cheek.

“I still think I dreamed you,” Ronan said.

Adam smiled lightly. Ronan closed his eyes and kissed it off his lips, wrapping an arm around his waist, letting Adam guide him with his hands.

If he could banish his night horrors, he would gladly live in a dream with Adam.

Live in this moment forever.

  
  


Blue curled up in the corner of the worn couch, pulling a blanket up to her chin as Henry messed with the ancient CD and VHS tape player, which might be slightly questionable in quality. The disc kept jamming and ejecting, and finally Blue said, “There’s probably a disc in there already.”

Henry pressed another button, and the VHS slot shot _FernGully: The Last Rainforest_ onto the floor. “Aww, another artifact for me?”

Blue laughed. “Childhood favorite.”

Gansey swung onto the couch, lifting up the blanket. He looked brighter than he had the whole night, skin flushed, eyes alive. “I remember you making me watch that.”

“I didn’t _make you_ do anything.”

Blue held out her arms like a child asking for a stuffie and Gansey obediently tucked himself against her, back to her chest, half in her lap. She pulled the blanket securely over them and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He was heavy, but she didn’t mind. His skin had warmed significantly.

Henry found the _FernGully_ case in a stack and grinned at the blue-haired girl on the poster taped to the back. “I didn’t know you were in a movie.”

Blue grabbed a piece of popcorn from the bag on the floor and tossed it at him.

“Always throwing food in this house,” Henry said. “So uncivilized.”

She threw a kernel. Henry threw it back only to hit Gansey and finally ejected the proper disc, flashing the name at her in amusement. A Pixar movie, and another old favorite. Blue felt Noah’s presence behind her and looked back. He folded his arms over the back of the couch and stayed where he was, looking entertained by Henry’s technology struggles.

“Doesn’t the main character of _Corpse Bride_ decide he’s going to die to be with her,” Gansey said, “then change his mind an hour later?”

“Oh yeah,” Blue said, carding a hand through Gansey’s hair. “Also I’m pretty sure the whole story takes place in less than twenty-four hours.”

Gansey chuckled and turned his face, cold nose to her jaw. Blue waited for the other shoe to drop. For him to say whatever had been stewing since she’d handed him the blood bag, or since they’d walked up to the first house when trick-or-treating.

Henry finally worked everything out and approached with remotes in hand. He sat on the other end of the couch, Gansey’s feet in his lap, and started fiddling with the settings when the screen only showed static. Blue prepared comebacks for the relentless teasing sure to come with comparisons to Coraline.

Adam and Ronan stumbled in the entrance, hands clasped tightly, just as Henry got the movie ready to play. They settled down on the rug in front of the couch, and after a beat, Noah joined them, his head by Blue’s knee.

“Can I just--,” Gansey started, and cut himself off. Blue moved her nails gently down his scalp. He didn’t move, tucking the words into the sliver of space between his lips and her throat. “I didn’t know what to do with myself after Glendower and Piper, and it was easier to get my footing without hurting anyone when all my waking efforts were to help.”

He said it in a rush, so condensed Blue knew he’d narrowed down to the fewest words possible and recited it. And that was it. Blue tightened her arms around him.

“We understand,” she said. “I hope you know that this is supposed to be an exchange. We’re all equals. You’re not responsible for all of us.”

Gansey nodded the barest bit.

“You better fucking know it, Dick,” Ronan said, craning his neck around.

“We won’t hold together otherwise,” Adam said.

They sat in comfortable silence, letting Gansey take it in. Blue didn’t know what expression he made, but it must’ve been a sure enough smile, for Henry beamed and Ronan nodded in approval.

“One day at a time,” Noah said, voice small and distant.

Henry clapped Gansey’s leg. “Is our king back?”

“I’m here,” Gansey said. He sat up a few inches, enough to turn to Blue. “I’m not a monster.”

“Glad you noticed,” Blue said. 

And _that_ was the look that had eased the others. Gansey’s smile, his genuine one, his pure one. She hadn’t seen it so unfiltered since they were teenagers, and it took her breath away.

“Are you happy?” he asked her.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I will be.”

  
  


Gansey could be, but Ronan and Adam were still being dragged along for Cabeswater’s purposes. He tried to stifle the growing feeling of bitterness, of anticipation, as the clock ticked later and later.

They watched _Coraline,_ throwing around theories and commentary, picking out which characters they would be. Played card games. Cheated at card games. Done anything to form new memories. Made very early morning pancakes when snacks didn’t hold them over and talked about anything and everything. 

“Next year,” Adam said, “we need to plan actual meals.”

Ronan stared at him. It took too long for the words to register. That was when it began.

They moved back to the floors and couches, arranged in a circle, consciousness drifting in and out of Ronan’s reach.

_All good things have to come to an end._

The sky outside the great windows lightened in the distance. Ronan felt like he was holding his breath indefinitely. He leaned against Adam’s shoulder, unable to focus on the conversation. The words turned blurred and strange, warped like they were sitting underwater.

“. . .had to be the original. . .” Blue said. “. . .well I. . .put the key. . .button eyes are. . .vermillion!”

Henry laughed, or Ronan thought he was laughing, because then it sounded like Gansey’s laugh instead and his eyes were closed.

“Are you going out?” Adam said, hand tight on his thigh.

Ronan opened his eyes and saw his father. So much like him, tall and imposing, glacier eyes piercing him. Ronan blinked, and his father was gone.

“Normally, I can’t even be here this long. This is. . .” Ronan fought for words, squinting at the hazy spot where Niall had been. “. . .lucky?”

“Noah,” Henry said suddenly, alarmed. “Hey, Czerny--”

He was there and gone again. Noah’s absences registered but his reappearances did not, creating a strange effect of startling at the empty floor and the couch, then looking at Noah sitting there like Ronan had focused his eyes and only just seen that he’d been there the whole time.

“Noah.” Gansey dropped a hand to Noah’s shoulder. Held it out in empty air. Held Noah’s shoulder. “Weren’t you telling us about how you wanted one of those magical cats? Like the movies?”

“So they could be with me,” Noah said, looking confused.

Gansey and Blue slid off the couch to either side of Noah. Henry followed, until they were crowded on the floor. Adam wrapped an arm around Ronan’s shoulders as he tipped into him, body weak for a moment, and Blue hugged Noah.

“Can you take any energy?” she asked.

Noah kept fading. Blue reached back and grabbed Ronan’s hand instead. He jolted awake, a spark passing through their skin. His mind cleared enough for him to shuffle forward and put a hand on Noah’s knee. They each touched him, his shoulders or arms or cheek, and Noah smiled.

“I’m gone,” Noah said sweetly. “Then you. . .get me back. Lucky. Lucky.”

“I’ll tell them,” Blue said.

Noah’s brow furrowed. The sun was rising, and the magic of All Hallows’ Eve was retreating. “Murdered? Murdered. Murdered--”

“Remembered,” Ronan said. 

“I have to go after him,” Adam said. “Try to catch him in the spirit world before he can wander off.”

“Nothing’s changed?” Ronan said. “Cabeswater didn’t. . .”

“You’re tiring,” Adam said, “and I feel the disconnect in my heart.”

“This isn’t a forever goodbye,” Blue said, but her eyes were shining as she leaned over to wrap an arm around Adam.

_Then why does it feel like it every damn time?_

Noah slipped away for another year. Ronan flexed his fingers in the air.

“I have to go,” Adam said. He kissed Ronan.

It happened too fast.

Adam curled into Ronan’s chest, and was gone. Body emptying, going limp like he was dead, face slack.

It happened so fast. The whole night in a heartbeat. From standing in the unenchanted woods so like Cabeswater to the real thing, to the balcony, to the movie, to now. A blink.

“Slow down,” he said, or thought he said. Blue grabbed his hand again, but the slight spark couldn’t save him from the exhaustion pulling him down. He knew they were saying something, but he couldn’t hear, couldn’t think.

He slipped his arms under Adam’s knees and shoulders and scooped him up, dimly aware of the walk back to his room. How would Blue bring him to Fox Way? Drag their bodies into the car? Wait until they woke up again--didn’t they decide. Didn’t they.

Ronan gingerly tucked Adam into his bed. _He’s just sleeping,_ Ronan thought. He’d dealt with plenty of sleeping creatures, Briar Roses, only alive and pure in dreams. And yet. He never got better at handling them. Handling all the mess they made of his heart, outside his body, somewhere it could be trampled.

“Will you be here?” Ronan said to the ceiling. He crawled in beside Adam, back in the same spot they’d begun.

Blue sniffled, hovering in the corner of his vision. “I don’t know. I have to go to Utah for a month, some people need help there.” Ronan scoffed, though it was more like an exhale. “They have cool rocks, you know.”

Ronan forced his eyes to stay open. “Henry.”

“Are you sure?”

Ronan held out his hand. Someone pressed paper into it. He looked at the list, committing it to memory, letters swimming together. Adam’s arm was pressed to his, still warm. Ronan pretended he was just sleeping, just--

He was falling asleep. 

Adam jerked awake.

Exhaustion tugged him like a siren pulling a sailor down into the sea--and then a switch flipped. He was tired. Still. But not--like that. It was a resistible kind of tired, a not-cursed kind of--

“Adam!” Ronan dragged himself up. Adam was heaving beside him, gulping down air, hands flailing in the sheets.

Someone jumped on Ronan, and then they were all on the bed, Blue between them and Henry and Gansey leaned over them, crushing him into the mattress.

“Are you free?” Blue said.

Ronan wrapped one arm around her, hand landing on Gansey’s back, and reached for Adam.

“Cabeswater must have listened,” Gansey said.

“Hurrah,” Henry said, his sarcasm not enough to mask the tightness of his voice, “no need to burn it down.”

Ronan had never felt like _this_ before. Not for years, he felt--normal. Just normal. The whole night had been tainted with a dreamy quality, a slight vividness that wasn’t real, but now it was all true. Really true. The world as it was to everyone else. His heart beat against his ribcage, a bird tearing free.

Chainsaw cawed from his desk. Awake. They were awake.

Adam was staring at his hands.

“That disconnect,” Ronan started.

“It’s gone,” Adam finished.

“You’re home,” Blue said. “We’re all home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: an epilogue is officially in the works!
> 
> This is the longest fic I’ve written yet and it’s been such a fun ride! Thank you to my fantastic beta reader, Neil, you’re the best. Your commentary made every word worth it. And thank you, dear reader who has gone on this journey with me. Leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed! <3
> 
> Happy Halloween!


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